UKRAINIANS AT THE GATES OF HELL

In September of 1938, former British prime minister Neville Chamberlain concluded an appeasement pact with Adolph Hitler, proclaiming "Peace for our time." A year later, the Nazis invaded Poland, facing no military opposition from either Britain or France, both of which previously "guaranteed" the integrity of the Polish state. Nazi Germany's invasion triggered World War II, leading to years of Fascist domination, killing 15-20 million in Europe alone and affecting millions more for generations to come. Today, in Ukraine, we again stand at the precipice of a world war. But this time our weapons are considerably more lethal, capable of potentially erasing all of civilization as we know it. Taking a page from Chamberlain's book, French president Emanuel Macron and Israeli prime minister Naftali Bennett each spent hours at the Kremlin unsuccessfully negotiating for a peaceful solution to a military conflict manufactured by Russia's criminally deranged, malignantly narcissistic autocrat Vladimir Putin. Claiming that Ukraine in fact does not exist, Putin is exhibiting his appetite for wholesale genocide as his troops attempt to annihilate all of Ukraine to counter unexpectedly strong opposition. This is a strategy he has used before, when, while subduing a separatist uprising in Chechnya in 1994, he flattened its capital Grozny, and again, a decade ago, when he did the same to Aleppo in Syria. The daily, often hourly, graphic depiction of the deterioration of the situation on the ground in Ukraine, and the unending plight of close to two million evacuees to date, are giving my tear ducts a workout. To secure my sanity, I have been advised to limit watching the news. However, I can't erase from my mind that, even when I turn off social media, entire families, including women, children and the elderly, are being slaughtered slightly more than 6,000 miles from here. It is difficult to wrap your mind around what has happened in the short period of time during which a democratic country of 44 million people transitioned from a relatively peaceful existence to facing total annihilation at the gates of hell. Feeling helplessly overwhelmed by emotion, the tendency is to try to make sense of all of this and to figure out how this catastrophe might end. It is pointless to focus on the Russian political system. We are dealing with a consummate autocracy. And virtually all analytical models used by political scientists assume they are working with rational actors. Putin defies rational analysis. Although some descriptions of him may make us feel better, they won't help us. Senator Mitt Romney describes him as "a small, evil, feral-eyed man who is trying to shape the world in the image where once again Russia would be an empire." Others have already branded him a "war criminal." Alex Konanykhin, a Russian businessman based in California, has offered a million dollar bounty for anyone who arrests Putin as a "war criminal" under Russian and international law. Mincing even fewer words, Senator Lindsey Graham openly suggested that "the only way this ends is for somebody in Russia to take him out." Malignant narcissists tend to be unpredictable, irrational, ruthless, sadistic and paranoid. If cornered, or when they don't get what they want, they tend to destroy whatever gets in their way - essentially what Putin appears to be doing already today. Emotions are running high and the concern that he won't stop with Ukraine are growing by the day. Vladimir Sorokin, writer in residence at Stanford University, who is intimately familiar with the Russian dictator, cautions that Putin's end goal isn't Ukraine - it's Western civilization - which he hates. Patrick Mulroy, national security analyst for ABC, agrees that the risk of this conflict escalating beyond Ukraine is very high. It could morph into World War III, especially because multiple NATO members surround the current theater. President Biden has been adamant that "the United States will defend every inch of NATO territory with the full force of American power." Since Putin has already defined the sanctions imposed on his country as "acts of war," he probably won't need much more to convince him to venture out. His seizure of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, Europe's largest, could also easily develop into a continent-wide cataclysmic event. While most of his western European supporters are now either recanting their pro-Putin stance or laying low, in our country some vocal admirers have regrettably not changed their tune. Fox News host Tucker Carlson openly continues to side with Putin, suggesting that "only a war-mongering liberal obsessive would fuss over Mr. Putin's prosecution of the faraway conflict." As expected, former president Donald Trump also chimed in, praising Putin, calling him "smart" and suggesting "he is playing [President] Biden like a drum." For the sake of all who are brutally led to the brink of extinction in Ukraine and for the sake of very brave people who are not only fighting for their own survival, but who are putting their lives on the line for all of us, for our way of life, for the democratic principles most of us grew up with, we must stop this calamity at all cost. Our empathy alone won't stop this assault. We must go beyond economic sanctions. They do have an effect and could possibly generate revolutionary pressure within his circle of oligarchs, but they won't stop a cornered madman who feels threatened and is known to employ anything and everything to get his way. The consequences of appeasement as employed by 1939 European governments ought to be compelling. We have no time to waste. Tomorrow could be too late. SLAVA UKRAINI Theo Wierdsma