VOne can only have the respect that the Federal President has for the Ukrainians. When Putin unleashed his war machine on the former “fraternal people” six months ago, hardly anyone in the West expected that Kyiv would be able to resist for long. The aggressor probably didn’t expect it either. But the Ukrainians had used the years since the Crimean invasion to strengthen their armed forces. They are materially inferior to the enemy, despite support from the West.
But the defenders have better morale than the invaders: the Russians are waging a criminal war, the Ukrainians are fighting for their freedom. They know what threatened their country if Moscow’s despotism prevailed: subjugation and “de-Ukrainization”, by which the Kremlin means nothing less than the annihilation of all Ukrainians: state, nation, culture.
Ukrainians defend free Europe
In this war, however, the Ukrainians are also defending the right to self-determination of all the free peoples of Europe. They are at the forefront of fighting for the principles of state sovereignty and territorial integrity, to which Putin adheres just as little as to contracts of any kind rehearsal. Then the voices will become even louder advising Kyiv to reach an “understanding” with the aggressor, because Ukraine cannot win the war after all.
Such presumptuous recommendations reveal a breathtaking blindness to Putin’s goals and an almost unbelievable obliviousness to history. August 23, one day before Ukraine’s Independence Day, marks the anniversary of the signing of the Hitler-Stalin Pact. In the secret additional protocol, the dictators not only divided Poland, but all of Eastern Europe, in order to later submit “their” halves by force. The spirit of this pact reigns once again in the Kremlin. You can, but you mustn’t come to terms with him.
