You probably have heard discussions on various newscasts about how differently Americans are reacting to the Ukrainian refugee crisis. With refugees from Syria, Central America, or Afghanistan, opinions varied widely in the United States about how much we should help. For refugees coming over our southern border, there has been quite a bit of outright hostility. So why are Americans united in their desire to help Ukrainian refugees?
It’s easy to point to differences in religion, race, or culture, but there is one other extremely important distinction. Refugees at our southern border cite general poverty, corruption, and gang violence, not invasion. The civil wars in Syria, or Afghanistan, are internal conflicts which involve leaders who lack competence, or integrity. In some cases, we look to support the lesser of two evils. In Afghanistan we threw incredible amounts of money, time, and training at the problem, only to watch the Taliban easily retake power when president Ashraf Ghani ran.
But the Ukrainian conflict is a clear cut example of a larger nation’s aggression against a smaller one that it intends to conquer. Watching Russia move against Kyiv made many of us think of September 1, 1939 when the Nazis invaded Poland, under a similar false flag incident, manufactured by the aggressor.
Then, unlike Ghani, the charismatic Ukrainian president, Zelenskyy, who won the 2019 election by more than 73%, rallied his people. He stayed to fight, refusing offers for evacuation as Russia closed in. He has stood like David and his slingshot in the face of Goliath, never backing down, even when it looked like certain death.
Aside from Russian empire-building, we really haven’t seen one sovereign nation invading another since the Second World War. It is jarring, but not surprising. The world seemed to have little to say when Russia moved against Georgia in 2008 or took the Crimean Peninsula in 2014. Putin likely thought this would be the same.
Putin likes to compare his power grabs to the U.S. taking back Texas. The difference is, although Texas some times talks of secession, it hasn’t actually done it. Ukraine, on the other hand, was so desperate to get away from Russia’s oppression that leaders considered taking Nazi help in 1941. It is where Putin gets his talking point about Ukrainians being Nazis. Ukrainians didn’t particularly as Nazis, they just hated the Russians enough to take help from anyone who offered to help them break free from Russia’s grip. Ukraine declared independence in 1917 and has fought since that time to keep it.
I woke up the morning of February 26 and ran downstairs to turn on the news. Playing in my head were the lines from our Star Spangled Banner, “. . . the rockets’ red glare/Bombs bursting in air/Gave proof through the night/That our flag was still there.” I prayed that this had been the experience of the Ukrainians and that their flag still flew over Ukraine. When they survived that night, and then the next day and the next, I think the whole world was given a new hope that democracy and freedom, against all odds, still can win. That’s why this situation in Ukraine is different from the other refugee situations.