It is 18 long and bloody months since Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine, a democratic European state, attempting to destroy its elected government and subjugate its 44 million souls. Horrifically, there have been half a million casualties and multiple cities and towns nearly wiped from the face of the earth. Not since Hitler and Stalin has Europe witnessed such desolation. There is an utterly haunting parallel with Hitler dismembering and then invading Czechoslovakia in the late 1930s.
I couldn’t agree more with Timothy Snyder, a historian of 20th-century tyranny, who tweeted: “A year and a half ago, Russia undertook a large-scale invasion of Ukraine. Since that time, Ukraine has taken back more than half of the territory then lost. If we don’t let them down, the Ukrainians will win this war, and bring us a more secure world.”