We Are All Ukrainians: How Long Will the US, EU, and Britain Sit Still and Let Russia Massacre Innocent Civilians in Ukraine?
I am angry, very angry! It seems that in order to avoid a nuclear confrontation with Russia and because Ukraine is not a member of NATO, the West sits idly by and lets Putin’s army brutally target civilians in heavily populated areas with only the resistance of the people of Ukraine and its brave and limited army.
The US and its European Allies hope that the economic sanctions and the sending of arms and ammunitions to Ukraine will deter Putin. Yet every day the number of casualties is increasing, and innocent people are slaughtered. Millions have abandoned their homes, resulting in an ever-increasing flow of Ukrainian refugees to neighboring countries.
President Zelensky, in his effort to put pressure on the EU and expedite Ukraine’s application to its membership, even asked how many deaths it would take before the West will physically intervene in Ukraine.
I get it. I understand the dynamics of war and I am not its advocate. I commend all the sanctions imposed on Russia so far. But there comes a time when the ethics of a Just War calls us to action. If we are so concerned that confronting Russia could lead to a full-fledged war and backfire at home, we should at least force a cease fire and allow UN peacekeeping operations to take place or band together to enforce a no-fly zone over Ukraine.
President Macron of France, after talking to Putin, said that the Russian president was determined to go further, and the worst is still yet to come. How long will we and other world leaders wait before trying to physically stop Russia?
We have been here before. In World War II, we knew what Hitler was doing, yet we let him massacre millions of innocent people. By the time we intervened, over 6 million Jews had been gassed. We did the same in Bosnia and in Rwanda. We rushed in when it was too late.
I am a pastor and an academic, not a politician. I am not even a military strategist. I am more concerned by the primacy of human lives. What I watch on TV and read in the news about Ukraine is a travesty. By not directly engaging Putin’s army, we fall short of our moral imperative to uphold the primacy of human dignity. An American chef who is providing meals to Ukrainians at the border with Poland recently asked, “How long will we let one man destroy so much?”
Autocratic men know only one language, the language of force. As long as we sit still and let the Ukrainian army fight the Russians alone, we are complicit with the Russians.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a German pastor, joined the resistance in Germany to incapacitate Hitler. He paid the ultimate price and was executed 2 months before the Allies invaded Germany in 1945. Our Christian faith calls us to resist evil and be peacemakers.
Sometimes the road to peace starts by stopping the strong man. I call upon all the men and women of faith in the world, I call to my brothers and sisters of the Orthodox Church in Russia and Protestant independent churches, please stop Putin from inflicting so much pain to our world. One loss of life is one too many. We are all Ukrainians. We can’t repeat the mistakes of the past and let one man dehumanize our fellow human beings as we sit by and watch. We should intervene right now by imposing a no-fly zone and stop the carnage of innocent people in Ukraine.
In His Name,
Pastor Will
