FRIDAY 2/24/23

By Todd Lassa

One year after Russia invaded Ukraine, democracy lives. In Ukraine. 

President Biden said so in his surprise visit with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Monday. 

“One year later, Kyiv stands. Ukraine stands. And democracy stands,” Biden said Monday. On Friday, the White House announced additional sanctions on Vladimir Putin’s Russia, targeting banks and tech industries, NPR reports.

“We endured. We were not defeated,” Zelenskyy said in his address to Ukraine Friday (BBC News translation). “Let us not forget how many gave their lives for Ukraine and the freedom of our people.”

Zelenskyy pledged that Ukraine would defeat Russia before the end of this year.

One year ago, Russia was expected to quickly capture Kyiv and depose Zelenskyy, replacing him with a Putin puppet. With Biden having already warned of the Russian invasion ahead of Russia’s invasion, the U.S. responded with military and humanitarian aid. Hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians escaped across the western border into Poland, while many Ukrainian men and women under 62 stayed or returned to fight back the Russians.

Ukraine pushed back and recaptured some of its eastern regions, while ill-equipped and ill-prepared Russian troops, later backed by the mercenary Wagner Group, launched missiles into schools and hospitals and apartment buildings, killing many civilians. In Russia the struggling anti-war movement reportedly is dead as Putin continues to tell lies about the invasion and his reasons for the attack. Former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev said Friday that Russia should push Ukraine back to the Polish border, the BBC reports.

With more, and better NATO and U.S. arms and equipment on the way, polls in Ukraine show that 80% of the people believe their country will eventually regain all its land, including the Crimea, lost to Russia in 2014, according to NPR’s Morning Edition.

Protecting democracy demands constant vigilance, and here in the United States, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) has handed over 44,000 hours of Capitol security video from 1/6 to Tucker Carlson, presumably so the Fox News host, a fan of authoritarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbån of Hungary – himself a Putin ally – can advance his conspiracy theories and alternative history of the attack. 

But the vociferous MAGA forces in the U.S. House who are calling an end to “Ukraine Fatigue” appear to be a small minority, including among the chamber’s Republicans. After Biden’s Monday visit, a small delegation of House Republicans, led by Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Mike McCaul, of Texas, met with Zelenskyy in Kyiv and pledging continuing U.S. support and even offering more military equipment. 

Democracy lives.

Slava Ukraine!