When I was in Grade 3, back in the mid-1950s, an older and belligerent kid chose me as his victim in the schoolyard one day. He picked on me because I wore glasses. He knew I had just arrived in the neighbourhood, so he teased me for being the new boy. He taunted me because he knew I didn’t have any friends to turn to. He made fun of my name.
“Hey, Teddy Bear,” he kept calling from across the yard.
Bad memories of that schoolyard experience returned to me last week when Russian President Vladimir Putin sent his columns of tanks, trucks and soldiers charging across his western frontier into Ukraine. Whether disguised as some cockeyed territorial imperative to recreate a Russian empire, or paranoia about the NATO alliance creeping onto his very doorstep, the former Soviet KGB operative now Russian despot has decided to use a 19th century-style invasion to overpower a modern neighbour (Ukraine became an independent nation in August 1991).
He has even invented an entire mythology to suggest that “Ukrainians and Russians are a single people.”
No. It still looks to me like a bully who’s chosen his latest victim.
The surprise so far, however, is that Putin’s putsch has not gone as he planned. On paper, the war between Russia and Ukraine is definitely not a fair fight. Russia possesses the world’s fifth largest army of 900,000 active soldiers and 2 million reservists, compared to Ukraine’s 196,000 active troops and 900,000 reservists.
But paper doesn’t win wars; indeed some suggest the invasion has exposed the Russian army as a paper tiger – with lack of supply, unpaid soldiers and even dissention in the ranks. Russian plans apparently called for the quick occupation of Kyiv and the even quicker overthrow of Ukraine’s government.
Why hasn’t that happened? In two words Volodymyr Zelensky. The Ukrainian president has emerged from the war-rattled streets of Kyiv and has willingly put weapons into the hands of every Ukrainian (aged 18 to 60) willing to fight. In doing so, he has harnessed a defensive force Putin could only dream of – Ukrainian patriotism.
“(Zelensky’s) messages have conveyed strength, empathy and fortitude,” said Colin Clarke, of the global intelligence Soufan Group this week, “a profile of courage.”
But as bravely as Ukrainian soldiers and civilians have dug in to defend their country, I don’t think that’s how bullies are stopped.
Call it folly, but now may finally be the time for the United Nations to step up and fulfill its most vital obligation enshrined in the UN Peace Charter of 1945 – Intervention. As the media have reported this week, Russia used its veto power at the Security Council (where it is one of five permanent members) to stop debate on the war.
However, for the first time in 40 years, the other four members have opted to send the “Uniting for Peace” resolution to a vote by the UN’s 193-member General Assembly. The resolution says that if/when the Security Council does not act to maintain international peace, the Assembly can act, up to and including the use of armed force.
The resolution was used before – in 1950 – to send 48 nations to the defence of South Korea, and while all it produced was an armistice, it may well have prevented a Third World War or even nuclear holocaust.
Indeed, following Putin’s threat to bring the Russian nuclear arsenal into play, Bob Rae, Canada’s UN ambassador, said that Putin has violated a joint statement issued last month by all five Security Council members – that nobody can win a nuclear war. Rae said that the UN Charter requires all signatory nations to decide disputes by due process, not on the battlefield.
If the General Assembly has the spine to stand up to Putin – with a two-thirds majority on the “Uniting for Peace” resolution – Russia could be expelled from the world body. Or, also provided under the resolution, the General Assembly could dispatch a military force to intervene in Ukraine.
In Winston Churchill’s “Iron Curtain” speech in 1946, he said, “Courts and magistrates may be set up, but they cannot function without sheriffs and constables.”
As I learned back in elementary school, cowering in the face of a bully, when friends stood beside me not with sticks but with solidarity, the bully disappeared.
Thank you for your thoughts on what’s happening in Ukraine. I believe Putin will push with his last breath to claim that country. He can’t back down now; he would “lose face” with his people who are fed state propaganda about the “nazification” of Ukraine, which needs to be stopped. He’s instituted a scorched earth policy. He’s bombing residential areas and hospitals, most recently a maternity hospital and strafing lines of refugees trying to escape. If he succeeds in taking Ukraine, I would be extremely nervous in other countries such as Latvia, Estonia, and Lithuania. I agree that he wants a resurrected Soviet Union of days past. It’s a race to see if sanctions will force him to back away or if Ukraine will fall first. Poland is sending fighter jets. Major corporations are leaving Russia, and the value of the ruble continues to fall, which punishes all Russians: those who support Putin and those who are bravely out in the streets, protesting, being arrested, and most likely “disappeared”. He’s violated Geneva Conventions. He is, essentially, hell-bent on conquering a sovereign nation at any cost. Will that mean the use of nuclear weapons? It’s beyond a Dr. Strangelove nightmare. By the way, what is Russia doing on the Security Council? I also wonder if China will use the West’s preoccupation to its advantage and move to tighten its grip on Taiwan, as it did with Hong Kong. Perhaps it will also deepen its ties to Russia, creating more fear and distrust and, as I’ve read, a new Cold War/Iron Curtain. There is so much misery around the world. (I know; it has always been thus.) How quickly Canadians seem to have forgotten Afghanistan and our promises to welcome many refugees from that desperate place. We utterly and shamefully failed those who counted on us for rescue from the Taliban. (There’s a foe that even the Soviet Union couldn’t crush.) Who remembers Yemen and its civil war funded partly by Saudia Arabia and with the U.S. also involved. I don’t think it’s an understatement to say it is a perilous time. And yet…such courage, tenacity, endurance, and defiance from the Ukrainian people whose lives are their land. I think today of the very young Ukrainian girl singing “Let it Go” from the film “Frozen”, in her language, as she sheltered from the bombardment. And, I think there were almost 400 babies born in Ukraine during the first week of the invasion. Life tries to continue. But will it? It depends on the West’s commitment to holding Putin and his cronies accountable for their barbarism, the repercussions of which will be intergenerational.