Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...

History seems to repeat itself. During World War II, the last major European war, tens of millions of people  died. Our fathers and grandfathers shed their blood to liberate Europe.  

Now Europe has another tyrant who would enslave Ukraine, a free country. The last European war started when Nazi Germany invaded Poland and Russia occupied eastern Poland. Now Russia is invading Ukraine.  

Stalin’s Russia murdered millions of Ukrainians during 1932 to 1933. This was a manmade famine that killed an estimated 3.9 million Ukrainians. Called the “Holodomor from the Ukrainian “holod” hunger,  and “mor” extermination. They were starved by systematically having their food confiscated. Ukrainians are no strangers to Russian aggression and genocide. 

President Biden has unified our European allies. Our sons and daughters are not currently in harm’s way in Ukraine. The United States and our allies have provided Ukraine with weapons. 

President Biden and our allies have imposed crippling sanctions on Russia. These sanctions will have repercussions on us and our European allies. Russia is a major natural gas and petroleum exporter. One impact on us will be higher energy prices, particularly natural gas and oil products. Paying higher prices for energy is a small sacrifice compared to that of the Ukrainian people who are fighting and dying to defend their freedom and country. Our energy assistance to our European allies will punish Russia without putting our troops in harm’s way.  

Ukrainians are fighting for their country. They remember family members who were murdered by Russian genocide during the 1930s. Since 2014, an estimated 14,000 people have lost their lives in the Russian aggression in Crimea and eastern Ukraine, and an untold number have died in the current  onslaught. 

Sacrificing Czechoslovakia to appease Hitler in 1938 did not work. Appeasing Putin now will not work  either.  

Joe Pacovsky 

Hayward