Stop the Hitler of the 21st century!

Twenty years ago, the world welcomed the new millennium. All wars across the Earth had ceased, and only one point was barely visible burning – Russian bombs were turning residential buildings in the capital of Chechnya, the city of Grozny, together with its inhabitants, into piles of sand. The world of Big Politics did not notice this point, did not punish the murderer of an entire people, numbering barely one million. Russia was not expelled from the G8, it was not suffocated by sanctions – they only expressed deep concern. Putin was shaken with bloody hands. Petrodollars were flowing to Russia. However, in 2004, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia were admitted to NATO.

However, no matter how much you feed the wolf, he still looks into the forest! In 2007, at the Munich International Security Forum, Putin surprised the whole world by calling the (relatively peaceful) collapse of the USSR “the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the 20th century.” This was effectively an announcement to the West of a new Cold War and a senseless attempt to “fix” this “catastrophe” at any cost.

Putin (yes, Medvedev was president at the time, but Putin remained supreme ruler) began testing his efforts in 2008. On August 8, Russia invaded Georgia, accusing its president, Mikheil Saakashvili, of the “genocide of North Ossetians.” The real goal of the invasion was to force Saakashvili to stop the country’s “Westward” movement and return it to the Russian sphere of influence, taking advantage of NATO’s refusal to provide Georgia and Ukraine with a Membership Preparation Plan.

Russian bombs destroyed residential buildings in the cities of Gori, Poti, and Tbilisi—far beyond the region Russia calls South Ossetia (Georgian Tskhinvali region); Russia also “seized” Abkhazia. Russian-backed South Ossetian paramilitaries carried out ethnic cleansing in Georgian villages around the region. Russian troops were advancing and were within 40 km of Tbilisi.

And then the heads of six states committed a heroic act. US President George W. Bush sent a destroyer to the Black Sea. And the presidents of Ukraine Viktor Yushchenko, Poland Lech Kaczynski, Lithuania Valdas Adamkus, Estonia Toomas Hendriks Ilves and Latvian Prime Minister Ivars Godmanis came to Tbilisi and took part in a rally of the capital's residents. Perhaps because of their participation, Russian troops did not dare to advance further and bomb the Georgian capital. A ceasefire was concluded through the mediation of French President Nicolas Sarkozy (France then held the presidency of the EU).

However, after this short but devastating war, which left over 300 dead and 192,000 people, mostly Georgians, homeless refugees, Russia once again faced no punishment for war crimes.

"According to scholar Martin Malek, Western countries did not consider it necessary to escalate tensions with Russia over "tiny and insignificant" Georgia. In the Caucasian Review of International Affairs, he wrote that Western politicians did not want to alienate Russia, since its support was necessary to solve "international problems." A report by the European Parliament's Foreign Affairs Committee in May 2015 stated that "the EU's response to Russia's aggression against Georgia and violation of its territorial integrity in 2008 may have encouraged Russia to act in a similar way in Ukraine," Wikipedia notes.

US President Barack Obama began the so-called “reset” with Russia in 2009. It ended in 2012 with the de facto expulsion of US Ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul and the brief rise and brutal defeat of a mass protest movement against the rigged elections that “gifted” Putin a third term. From this milestone, 2012, Putin began to gradually shed all his masks. The grin of a ruthless dictator emerged. The darkness of repression began to descend on Russia.

The Ukrainian Maidan of 2014 was the next milestone, as Putin is terribly afraid of peaceful mass protests. Taking advantage of the turmoil that came to Ukraine after the ouster of Yanukovych, Putin swiftly seized Crimea. Hoping that this would satisfy him, but lacking a combat-ready army at the time, the Ukrainians did not resist. Putin took this as weakness and incited an “uprising” in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions, which quickly escalated into an armed conflict.

No state recognized the annexation of Crimea. Russia was finally expelled from the G8, which became the G7. Some economic sanctions were imposed. And that was it. Russia again suffered no serious damage.

In 2020, Putin held a so-called "referendum on amendments to the Constitution," which gave him at least eight more years in power. They no longer cared even about the appearance of some objectivity - they falsified the referendum massively, openly, brazenly. And again the West swallowed it.

Having completely gone crazy from such impunity, in 2021 Putin began to draw troops to the borders of Ukraine, making completely absurd demands to the West (more precisely, to US President Joseph Biden): to provide “reinforced concrete legal guarantees” that the former Soviet republics would never be accepted into NATO; to disarm Ukraine; and to push “NATO’s strategic weapons” back to the 1997 borders (that is, to effectively exclude 16 countries that joined after that year from the Alliance). Of course, Putin was refused these demands.

Biden and other heads of state warned Putin that an invasion of Ukraine would result in “hellish sanctions.” They also warned that a war with Ukraine would not be an easy one. They provided Ukraine with anti-tank and other purely defensive weapons.

However, believing in the weakness of Ukraine and the West and blackmailing with nuclear weapons, the dictator did not want to stop. Having unleashed almost the entire might of his armed forces on a peaceful neighboring state that posed no threat to anyone, Putin, with all his fury, is destroying 40 million Ukraine, exterminating its peaceful inhabitants using the same methods as in Chechnya. Suffering devastating losses from the desperate, unanimous and very skillful resistance of the Armed Forces of Ukraine and its entire people, Putin gives criminal orders to shell Ukrainian cities with "Grad" missiles and bomb cluster and depth charges. Moreover, the greatest destruction is suffered by those cities that still remain "Russian-speaking": Kharkiv, Mariupol, Energodar... The Russian invaders have captured the Chernobyl and Zaporizhia nuclear power plants...

After three weeks of fierce fighting and hellish destruction, mass killing of civilians, not a single city has surrendered or fallen. The resistance continues. Ukraine is supported by virtually the entire world.

However, there are some limits. A mad dictator is simply eager to cause a nuclear disaster – either by “pressing the red button” or by causing an accident at a captured nuclear power plant. The Chernobyl nuclear power plant was de-energized and stood without electricity for four days, which threatened the inevitable overheating of the reactor. Only the heroic actions of Ukrainian nuclear engineers brought the plant back to life. On March 7, the Russian invaders started a fire at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant and only after 3 hours of burning did they “mercifully” allow Ukrainian firefighters to extinguish it.

Naturally, the world is afraid of Putin's nuclear blackmail, which is actually nuclear terrorism. For this reason alone, NATO countries do not enter into a direct confrontation with Russia. However, despite heroic resistance and all the enormous assistance and comprehensive support from around the world, Ukraine found itself facing the threat of mass extermination of the population. It is defenseless against devastating bombings and shelling. Almost 2 million people have already left the country...

This situation requires swift and decisive action. If not closing the skies, then at least arming the Ukrainian army with fighter jets and missile defense systems. Such assistance is vital to achieving victory over the new Hitler. And victory is vital to the survival of all Western civilization. Because if Putin wins, he will not stop at some reasonable compromise, but will demand the complete subjugation of Ukraine at any cost, keeping the whole world under the sights of nuclear terrorism.

Nadiya Banchyk