This is where appeasing Putin has led us to; time for a drastic change in strategy to address human rights violations in Russia and beyond.
Over a hundred Victorians assembled on the steps of the province’s legislature this Sunday to protest war crimes and genocide committed by Russian armed forces in Ukraine, and clamour for more government action, such as a ban on Russian oil and natural gas, a no-fly zone, and even boots on the ground.
The various speakers from the Ukrainian diaspora did not mince their words: their people were being massacred, raped, and deported en masse. They used the terms war crimes and genocide. They called for more than mere material and verbal support in order to stop the Russian threat of Ukraine’s annihilation. They were desperate, and furious, both at Putin and at the relative inaction of our own leaders pulling punches against the biggest military threat and humanitarian disaster in Europe since World War II.
And indeed it’s difficult to offer excuses to people fighting a massively superior military force committing countless atrocities with relative impunity. It’s difficult to explain why implementing effective sanctions is so difficult after seeing images of the massacre of Bucha or the siege of Mariupol. In spite of the rally of nations against Putin’s acts of aggression, there’s still a feeling of deja vu, that History is repeating itself, that world leaders are still somehow appeasing Hitler even as the war breaks out across Eastern Europe. Make no mistake, these hard decisions are inevitable, and are only being postponed to one’s detriment.
If the speakers could have mustered the words, they would have summarised it by asking for less Justin Trudeau and more Wiston Churchill—and I would wholeheartedly second that:
Statesmen are not called upon only to settle easy questions. These often settle themselves. It is where the balance quivers, and the proportions are veiled in mist, that the opportunity for world-saving decisions presents itself.
~Winston Churchill, 1948, The Second World War
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