We are all Ukraine
And once more we see echoes from an old playbook
Is this how rational, ethical Germans felt in 1933, watching madmen and thugs commandeer the Fatherland? The new Dear Leader threatened to annex the neighboring Germanic countries, arguing that Germany had been robbed by the international order and now was the time that Germany was going to take it all back. Sound familiar? At the core, Hitler’s propaganda all came down to a push to somehow make Germany “great again.” He also made friends with other tyrants and they banded together to create chaos in the world. What did German citizens do? A lot of them fled. Some stayed and picked a side. No doubt some stayed and tried to remain unseen. Just keep your head down, maybe they’ll keep going, maybe you won’t be noticed, maybe you won’t have to make a difficult choice?
The events of February 28 have me in a state of shock and despair. The moment I saw VP Vance arrogantly waving his hands, I didn’t have to hear his words. I knew from his body language what was going on. There are two sides here. There’s Good and there’s Evil. All the goodness and all the heroism is on one side. The other side—yep, that’s the side Vance is on—has nothing virtuous in its corner.
Donald Trump says to Ukraine, “You don’t have the cards.”1 That says everything about what this means to him. To him, it’s a game. It’s just a business deal, a negotiation, a chance to win or to lose, and we all know that Donald Trump will do anything to avoid the appearance of loss. Volodymyr Zelenskyy sees it all quite differently—not as a game, but as a very serious fight for survival, for the integrity and the autonomy of his people’s lives. What if their positions were reversed? What if it was Donald Trump whose country had been invaded? Would Donald Trump have stayed to lead his people through their defensive war? Maybe Trump would have negotiated with the aggressor and ceded territory instead of defending what was his? No? Well, that’s what he’s asking Zelenskyy to do. Trump himself would never back down, but that is what he wants Ukraine to do. He’s asking Zelenskyy to negotiate on the aggressor’s terms. He’s trying to gaslight Zelenskyy into accepting his own false view of the situation. The February 28 meeting ended badly because Zelenskyy refused to be gaslit. Zelenskyy maintained the mental acuity to stand strong in what he and every rational person knows to be true. I counted two times that Zelenskyy called out the marks of Putin all over this conversation. “I heard it from Putin,” the President of Ukraine said when Trump echoed Kremlin propaganda; and although in the other instance Putin was unnamed, he was unmistakably implied when Zelenskyy referred to the “influence” that Trump and Vance would one day feel themselves to be under.2
Then there was Marco Rubio, “Secretary of State,” slumped on the couch next to VP Vance, utterly emasculated.3 Here is the “Little Marco” of Trump’s mockery. He now dances for his torturer. It’s classic Stockholm syndrome. He sold his soul and now he is just a shadow of his former self, totally in the thrall of his dark lord. During the whole February 28 meeting, Rubio looked like he wanted to vomit.
“Just say thank you,” Vance said to Zelenskyy. Zelenskyy proceeded to thank the American people, and of course, as many people have pointed out, Zelenskyy has expressed not only gratitude but humility on a number of occasions. That’s not good enough for Trump. Trump wants the gratitude to be for him personally. He wants the credit for everything and the blame for nothing.
It was galling to hear Trump and Vance lecture about peace, as if Zelenskyy or any Ukrainian is somehow to blame because Russia invaded their country. In the Trump/Vance view, Ukraine should simply lay down arms, agree to a ceasefire, and let Russia take what they want. Trump and Vance fault Ukraine for fighting to keep their country for themselves and on their own terms. But again, Zelenskyy is too smart to be gaslit. He knows what this war is about. He knows whose fault it is. He knows that Putin cannot be trusted. He knows that because Putin has shown his colors time and time again. I think the most important thing said was from Zelenskyy in his summary of the conflict—that no one ever stopped Putin since the 2014 annexation of the Crimea, that through 2022 Putin occupied various parts of the Ukraine and still no one stopped him. “From 2014 till 2022, the situation was the same—people have been dying on the contact line and nobody stopped him. We had a lot of conversations with him, including a bilateral conversation. As a new president in 2019, I signed with him a ceasefire deal alongside Macron and Merkel. All of them told me that he will never go. We also signed a gas contract with him. But after all of that, he broke the cease-fire. He killed our people, and he didn’t exchange prisoners. We signed the exchange of prisoners, but he didn’t do it.”4 5 6 Then three years ago, as of February 24, Russia launched its full-scale invasion of a NATO neighbor—and we still have people entertaining the idea that Putin can be stopped by some sort of appeasement. It didn’t work with Hitler, but somehow we think it will work with Putin? Make it make sense!
I don’t think it will do any good for Zelenskyy to try talking to Trump and Vance again. The malicious duo have made it abundantly clear they are not interested in evenhanded talks. For all that Vance said about diplomacy, what he and Trump really want is control. Ironically, Trump and Vance, in their bid for mastery, are really ceding the control to Putin. Because, yes, Zelenskyy was spot on when he said that, though they don’t feel it now, they will eventually feel the influence of Putin.7 The traditional alliances in the world order have been completely overturned, just as they were when Hitler was breaking diplomatic deals and crossing red lines to take control of sovereign nations. We now have Canada joining forces with Europe in direct opposition to the Trump Administration while the latter, in the name of the USA, finds common ground with authoritarian regimes. It is a situation that, left unchecked, will escalate into something very bad. Zelenskyy said it all: Putin will not stop. The only barrier to peace is Putin. He must be stopped. He won’t stop of his own accord. He won’t stop because he doesn’t care about anything except power. Evil only wants power and it never stops until it gets more of it…or some other force stops it.
Just like I said in “Why Libraries Must Fight for DEI,” this isn’t the time to be shy about taking sides. There is no neutral position. You’re either for Good or you’re for Evil. Neutrality is appeasement. It’s keeping your head down in fear. I know it’s terrifying, but what choice is there? Are we a nation that stands up for ideals penned in the Age of Enlightenment—those ideas about the fundamental rights of mankind by Thomas Paine, the Marquis de Lafayette, and the American founding fathers? Are we to cede this incredible legacy at the pinnacle of the Free World in order to debase ourselves under the puppet mastery of the KGB agent Vladimir Putin?8 I’ve seen lots of people pointing out that there’s only one side in this conflict who are defending (with their lives) the principles of human liberty and dignity, and for once, it’s not the side chosen by the American president. Human rights are at a crisis point. Ukraine is the front line for the defense of those principles. Putin is the antagonist of human dignity everywhere. It’s not a game. It’s not about who has the winning cards. It’s about who has the guts to stand up for what is right. I stand with Ukraine.
https://www.c-span.org/clip/white-house-event/youre-either-going-to-make-a-deal-or-were-out/5155309
Transcripts & video from the February 28, 2025 Oval Office meeting:
https://foreignpolicy.com/2025/02/28/trump-zelensky-meeting-transcript-full-text-video-oval-office/
https://apnews.com/article/trump-zelenskyy-vance-transcript-oval-office-80685f5727628c64065da81525f8f0cf
Transcripts & video from the February 28, 2025 Oval Office meeting:
https://foreignpolicy.com/2025/02/28/trump-zelensky-meeting-transcript-full-text-video-oval-office/
https://apnews.com/article/trump-zelenskyy-vance-transcript-oval-office-80685f5727628c64065da81525f8f0cf
I admire Liz Cheney’s outright reference to Putin as the KGB war criminal.