February Column Winner

Invasion of Ukraine only 1st shot in a wider war 

By Jeff Mullin, Enid News & Eagle

Feb. 24, 2022. File that date away. Mark it on your calendar. It was the day World War III began, or at least World War II and a half.

It was last Thursday that Russian forces invaded the sovereign nation of Ukraine, returning war to Europe for the first time since May 8, 1945.

Ukraine may have fallen by now, I don’t know. As of this writing Russian forces attacking from neighboring Belarus had reportedly seized control of the Chernobyl nuclear site, the location of the world’s worst nuclear disaster and the scene of a colossal failure by the former Soviet Union.

Remember that term, the former Soviet Union. Russian dictator Vladimir Putin someday wants to remove the word “former.”

Ukraine is his first move toward that aim. For weeks he built up his military forces on the borders of Ukraine, daring the West to act, to try and stop him. The West stood by, shook its fists and threatened economic sanctions, some of which were imposed. Then, when Russia finally did invade Ukraine, we shook our fists harder and inflicted more economic sanctions.

None of which stopped the guns, the bombs and the tanks from rolling over the soil of a sovereign nation.

Putin blustered and postured, of course, saying Russia didn’t feel safe from the big, bad Ukranians, who were supposedly persecuting Russian separatists in the east of the country.

Putin’s forces staged so-called “false flag” attacks, carrying out a car bombing in Donetsk, attempting to blow up a chlorine tank in the separatist-held area of Donbas, and others, then blaming the Ukranians for all of it.

Putin also is afraid of big bad NATO gaining a foothold in what he sees as his territory by admitting Ukraine as a member. It is too late now. Soon there will be no independent Ukraine.

Sound familiar? It should. On Sept. 1, 1939, troops from Nazi Germany invaded Poland. The Nazis claimed the Poles had been persecuting ethnic Germans living in Poland and were conspiring with Great Britain and France to encircle and crush Germany. The SS even staged an attack at a German radio station, blaming Polish forces. Thus Hitler called his invasion a “retaliatory” campaign.

The Poles fought back, but their misery became complete on Sept. 17, 1939, when forces from another country invaded from the east. That other country? The Soviet Union. Funny how that works out.

The Soviet Union ceased to exist on the day after Christmas 1991, when the Soviet hammer and sickle flag came down for the last time over the Kremlin, replaced by the new tricolor Russian banner.

Putin wants nothing more than to see the hammer and sickle restored to its former glory.

Putin used to be an officer with the euphemistically named Committee for State Security, more commonly known as the KGB. He reportedly was a relatively low level agent but he served toward the end of his intelligence career in Dresden, then part of East Germany, observing the workings of the Stasi, the brutal East German secret police.

Since leaving the KGB and getting involved in government, first as an adviser to the mayor of his native St. Petersburg and then as deputy to the Kremlin’s chief administrator, Putin’s rise has been meteoric. He quickly became head of the FSB, the successor to the KGB, and then, in 1999, was appointed prime minister.

And today he is the vozhd, a word literally meaning leader but which has been linked to the personality cult surrounding Joseph Stalin. Ah, there’s another disturbing name from the past.

At any rate, to achieve his goal of reuniting the old Soviet Union, Putin will have to invade and conquer independent nations that, unlike Ukraine, are members of NATO, countries like Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania.

And if any country attacks a NATO member nation, the organization’s article 5 holds that an attack against one ally is an attack against all, including the United States. That would mean much more than sanctions, it would mean American boots, and blood, on the ground.

For now there isn’t much more we can do but watch Ukraine be swallowed up by Russian forces. There will be the normal consequences of any war — civilian casualties, destruction, untold pain, countless refugees and another blow struck against the principle of democracy.

Keep the Ukrainian people in your prayers, and save some for the rest of Europe, too. I fear this is only an opening salvo in Putin’s attempt to restore his country to its former evil imperial glory.