Article by Charles Lewis
Many in the Western democracies, in Canada and in the United States in particular, believe that the invasion of Ukraine is none of our business. It’s a regional fight. We should stay out of it. After all, the combatants are far away, too far to touch us.
Isolationism has always been a strong part of the U.S. political tradition. Read about the America First movement before the Second World War: It’s no coincidence that Donald Trump employed the slogan in his runs for the presidency. Vice-President J.D. Vance’s chilling statement that he “could care less about what happens to Ukraine” is part of that “hear no evil, see no evil” tradition. Remember how Trump and Vance humiliated Volodymyr Zelenskyy on live television. Vladimir Putin was reportedly thrilled. It’s no wonder that Ukraine and its friends no longer rely on the United States to do the right thing.
The danger is to forget history’s lessons. To ignore what is going on “over there” can blind us to how those seemingly distant battles will one day infect the world we live in. To ignore what is happening in Ukraine is tantamount to giving Putin the green light. It sends the message that we will not try to stop you. Do what you want, wherever you want, but just don’t bother us and we’ll leave you alone, never believing that the bully we appease may soon turn on us. History has shown that totalitarian beasts have big appetites. One successful invasion can lead to another, and another, toppling free, independent states like dominoes, while destroying countless innocent lives.
In the 1930s much of the West ignored Japanese imperial ambitions, despite knowledge of horrific war crimes taking places in places such as Nanking. Many isolationists in the United States thought this was not their battle. That changed, of course, on December 7, 1941, when Japan attacked Pearl Harbor, shooting bullets made with American scrap metal. In September 1938, Neville Chamberlain, the great British appeaser, thought he had created “peace in our time” by allowing Hitler to annex the region of Czechoslovakia called the Sudetenland. The Nazi rallying cry, “Today Germany, tomorrow the world,” was well known to most every clear-eyed observer. The intentions of the Nazis could not have been stated more clearly.
Chamberlain was convinced that with the Munich Agreement, which he waved triumphantly on his return to Britain, Hitler’s territorial ambitions had been satisfied. He said Hitler could be trusted. Less than a year later, the Nazis swallowed up the rest of Czechoslovakia. Imagine what the world would have looked like if he said to Hitler: No more!
“The European history of the 20th Century shows us that societies can break, democracies and fall, ethics can collapse and ordinary men can find themselves standing over death pits with guns in their hands,” historian Timothy Snyder states bluntly in his must-read book, On Tyranny. Snyder points to Russia’s current desire to reorder the world to its own amoral designs. After all, it’s not that long ago that the U.S.S.R put half of Europe behind a fence and made sure the right leaders were put in place to prevent rebellion. Putin has said that one of the great tragedies of the 20th century was the breakup of the Soviet empire.
What a thing to be nostalgic for.
“The Russian oligarchy established after the 1990 election continues to function and promotes a foreign policy designed to destroy democracy elsewhere,” Snyder notes. In a sense, the Russia of today has embraced the methods of Stalin and Hitler: the jailing and killing of anyone who publicly disagrees with the state. Worse still, the desire to force its will on innocent countries using extreme violence. Both tyrants created death squads to terrorize civilian populations. “After Putin returned to the presidency in 2012, Russian introduced terror management into his foreign policy,” Snyder writes. “In its invasion of Ukraine in 2014 Russia transformed units of its regular army into a terrorist force, removing insignia from uniforms and denying all responsibility for the dreadful suffering inflicted.”
Just look at what happened to the once-beautiful Ukrainian city of Mariupol. A Human Rights Watch investigation found a city pulverized into dust, including hospitals, schools and necessary electricity and water infrastructure. “The Russian assault on Mariupol in 2022 left thousands of civilians dead and injured including many in apparently unlawful attacks,” the report says. “Russian forces’ devastation of Mariupol continued efforts to erase Ukrainian culture …”
The horror was not limited to a single city. In Our Enemies Will Vanish, Ukrainian writer and Wall Street Journal correspondent Yaroslav Trofimov describes what happened in Bucha. Before it was attacked by the Russians in 2022, it was a comfortable town nicknamed “little Switzerland.” Russia put an end to that. After Ukrainian soldiers pushed the Russians out, they found a scene from hell. Men with their arms tied behind their backs, executed with bullets to the back of the head. Visible signs of torture with the eyes of victims gouged out. “Dozens of bodies lay rotting under the rain on Yablunska Street at the entrance to Bucha and in surrounding areas. One man had been shot as he tried to ferry some food, a bag of potatoes and an empty bottle of Coke still lying at his feet,” Trofimov reports. “An elderly woman sprawled next to her bicycle down the road. A tiger-patterned jacked covered the head of a man who had gone to walk his dog.”
Hitler and Stalin showed the world what they were capable of, yet many covered their eyes — it was all fake news, it was propaganda. Today Russia is making it clear what it can, and will, do. Think about what is happening in Ukraine as a contagion, with Ukraine valiantly trying its best to hold back Russian aggression from the rest of the world.
Ukrainians are fighting not just for their own land but for all countries that cherish freedom. As the violence escalates daily, the Canada-Ukraine Foundation is working tirelessly on the ground to minimize the devastating impact on civilians. Our teams are delivering critical humanitarian aid—medical supplies, food, shelter materials, and trauma support—to the most vulnerable communities ravaged by Russian attacks. Every day, we witness both heartbreaking destruction and remarkable resilience. The humanitarian crisis grows more dire with each passing week, with millions displaced and essential infrastructure deliberately targeted. We cannot stand idle while these atrocities continue. To defend Ukraine is to defend democracy itself. Please donate today to the CUF-UCC Ukraine Humanitarian Appeal and help us provide lifesaving assistance to those who need it most. Your contribution, no matter the size, makes a profound difference in this crucial fight for freedom and human dignity.
Background
CUF-UCC Ukraine Humanitarian Appeal has been established jointly by the Canada-Ukraine Foundation (CUF) and the Ukrainian Canadian Congress (UCC) to formalize a coordinated approach in providing humanitarian assistance quickly and efficiently to those in need in Ukraine to address any further aggression by Russia. The main efforts of cooperation are to provide humanitarian relief in the areas of assistance to displaced persons, medical care, emergency shelter and food security.
Charles Lewis is a veteran reporter and editor for such papers as the Ottawa Citizen and National Post. He flies a Ukrainian flag at his Toronto home in honour of his Ukrainian grandfather Joseph, who fled the Russians in the 1920s. Lewis is now retired and writes mainly for the Catholic press