La Conner Weekly News - Your independent hometown award-winning newspaper

Introduction: As John Leaver wrote last week of his family members (still) in Kyiv, we all live in an internationally connected world. We here feel Ukrainians’ pain as TV and the internet bring their lives home to us.

“Why?” being my favorite word from before two on, it came out of me the moment the all-clear siren sounded. May 1940, England’s southeast coast, inside our garden’s air raid shelter, mummy, baby Peter and me.

“Why do they drop bombs on us?”

Not till we were in the kitchen with Peter safe again in his cradle and mummy making a “weak cuppa” did she answer.

“I want you to understand, Jean, it’s not the German people doing this.”

That simple answer rings in my head now.

“It’s not the Russian people bombing Ukraine.”

I add up lessons from wartime. Some historians claim that WWII was a continuation of WWI. The Treaty of Versailles, 1918, settled nothing for the Germans except humiliation. Their need to regain respect and status in the world’s eyes proved fertile ground for Hitler’s rhetoric.

Here comes Putin with a similar need/history. His rhetoric holds captive the minds of millions of Russians. He trades on Russians’ long held fears of an invasion from the west.

Consider perestroika, the late ‘80’s breakup of the U.S.S.R.; the growing independence of former Soviet states as their people tasted freedoms nourished by trade with Europe and western democracies, international travel, President Kennedy’s “Ich bin ein Berliner” and the fall of the Berlin wall. What greater humiliation could the Kremlin face?

Putin did not emerge from nowhere. The Russian people are well prepared by years of suppression to swallow his lies. If now, with modern communications and from their own frontline soldiers on Ukrainian soil, if only, now the truth would set them free, would they join those under attack? Would or could Russians back home stop the slaughter? Would repentance follow in the form of reparations, immediate aid and long-term commitment to rebuild Ukraine?

The free world’s donated necessities must reach Ukrainians via ground transportation. Without the NATO nations, including the U.S., establishing a no-fly zone over Ukraine, Russia’s ignorant pilots drop any bomb they are given, ordered to use.

Cluster bombs are banned by international agreement. Russia has used them on Ukrainians, killing how many?

To my mind, knowledgeable on war firsthand, the U.S.’s refusal to invoke a no-fly zone parallels Pontius Pilate’s washing his hands of the decision to crucify Jesus. We are in fact handing Ukrainians of all ages and conditions over to Putin.

Russian and Chinese fettered minds are unable to speak of Putin’s atrocities. Worldwide, while rabbis, priests, pastors and imams ask willing congregants to provide aid for Ukraine, many people with no religious affiliation give generously. Charity has always been demonstrated as part of human nature.

While believers have the presence of divinity in their day-to-day lives, others are their own divinity. They hold that awesome responsibility to decide everything for and from oneself. Whatever and however one lies, the truth about Russia’s actions cannot be denied by free people.

Rich and poor alike, Elon Musk and millions of others are heeding the recent request of Mykhailo Fedorov, Ukraine’s 31-year-old vice prime minister. They are hitting Russia’s misinformation circuits and cancelling any technically benefiting support for that regime. They tell the truth.

Truth will eventually prevail. God bless John Leaver and everyone with ties to Ukraine.

“Jacqui” lives in La Conner.