...the example set by Volodymyr Zelensky, the 44-year-old president of Ukraine. Exhausted, unshaven and defiant, he has shown us the face of heroic resistance. In an address to his country on Thursday, he said, “I don’t want Ukraine’s history to be a legend about 300 Spartans. I want peace.”
"I want peace"? π
On the battlefield...Russian forces ran into unexpected resistance from
regular and irregular Ukrainian forces. While casualty figures are
difficult to verify, one American official estimated that Russian losses
are more than 2,000 — possibly the same as Ukrainian casualties.
This first phase of resistance is unlikely to last long, however, making
it imperative that the world continue to coalesce around the same
message to Ukrainians and Russians alike: No matter how long it takes,
Ukraine will be free.
From 4,600 miles away it is too easy to write an editorial terming this so-far 9-day war, the "panicked" flight of 1,000,000 of Ukraine's people through yesterday, the destruction of much of the country's infrastructure and its cities, "the first phase of resistance" when this first phase "is unlikely to last long." This was all foreseen, inevitable. Volodymyr Zelensky is not an "example for the world" to follow--The Ukrainian people should not have followed his "example"!--his resistance is foolhardy, not heroic, therefore he is no hero. He and his government sharply rebuked the Biden administration for creating “false panic” in the Ukrainian people for our deadly accurate intelligence on Moscow’s move. He buried his head and those of his people in the sand and now has to bury thousands of them in cemeteries. Then when the full assault—to take the entire country—began, just as we had warned him, he was all-Europe, all-Biden all the time. Neville Chamberlain wanted peace too, until it was too late too. Josef Stalin did not believe his Nazi partners would ever invade Soviet land (right through Ukraine too) and contemptuously dismissed personal warnings from Churchill and Roosevelt. Then, in the British joke, “This is Eden Street, formerly Ribbentrop street. This is Churchill boulevard, formerly Goering boulevard.
All day some version of this headline has appeared in the newspaper of record:
The Biden administration and its allies have an opening to speak directly to the stunned people of Russia and say plainly that their president is destroying their future...
"Stunned people of Russia"? What about the stunned people of Ukraine?
What about speaking directly to the stunned people of Ukraine and their president? Substituting "Ukraine" for "Russia" that almost-complete sentence makes more sense.
