Ukraine as the World’s Testing Ground of Humanness
It’s the ninth day of putin’s campaign to destroy our people.
We never attacked anyone. Neither did we oppress. Or threaten. Our fault is simply that we are Ukrainians. Our fault is that we exist. We were building our state and were succeeding more than putin in building his.
Because Ukraine is us, and Russia is him.
No Ukrainian person ever planned to inspire someone in this world by their death or the death of their son or father. Inspire to what? To be human? And we assure you that none of us wants to die so that Steven King would wear a T-shirt with the Ukrainian flag.
We would love to hurry through our morning work commutes as the inhabitants of Vienna do. As Amsterdamers, we would love to run into the park for a while in the evening. We would like to stop and admire our river like Parisians.
But now, we don’t even need those everyday life pleasures. We only need our lives.
Every day of this war kills us. The grief that the Ukrainians are facing cannot be compensated even by putin's death. No satisfaction would make up for the loss. But there are actions that can slow down the losses.
There are actions that can stop the most horrifying statistic. That can freeze the death count.
For now, Ukraine is a Colosseum, and the world has taken the best places to watch the spectacle of how putin is attempting to destroy us. We are the human who will survive only by overcoming an animal many times his size. We are in the arena, and the doors to backstage have been closed.
We give thanks for the sanctions, weapons and refugee shelters, but all that is palliative care.
We say, "Save us and take us into the EU," and we hear, "You are doing great!"; we ask, "Close our sky," and we hear – "How selflessly you are dying!".
How many more days does our country have to hold to earn at least not what we want but what we desperately need?
Earn our right to live. What kind of courage do we Ukrainians need to show so that the world out there would not be so afraid?
European leaders believe that if they do too much for this war, it might destabilize their countries. Why don’t you remember the White Paper that Britain issued instead of the Balfour Declaration, which established the quotas for the Jews who were able to return to their land as no more than seventy-five thousand in five years. This made it impossible for millions of people in Europe to be rescued from the Holocaust.
They adopted it to maintain stability in the region and prevent an overwhelming number of repatriated citizens.
They cannot announce war to Russia, a war not for territory but for the values, the equality, the law, the life, and send their troops to us because that might provoke a Third World War.
So kindly remember that the Second World War was provoked by precisely the same actions you are committing to "avoid" starting the Third.
Today, our people are dying for the values and rights that are natural for the citizens of the civilized world. Natural to the extent that the civilized world has forgotten that they must be protected and defended. It has forgotten how it obtained them, at what cost, with whom, and what is more – for what end. This war is for the values. For now, we are protecting in isolation that which everyone is enjoying. And if we lose those values, everyone will. And not necessarily because putin’s bombs will fly farther.
These days, the world has come to understand how important Ukraine is. How important for the world is the fight of good against evil. The world sees this struggle. It sees the light. Our values are resonating with an astounding number of people. They stand in solidarity with the Ukrainians. But solidarity is not enough for the Ukrainians to live and not to die.
If anyone hopes to negotiate with putin, they have forgotten history.
If anyone hopes that the invader will stop if the world allows him to grab one country, they are not worthy of history.
You can be free within the boundaries of your countries but slaves in the world.
by Mykhailo Tkach, UP writer
