Member-only story
The story of Ukraine’s valiant fight is a story of courage lost and courage regained.
And a war fought now is a war not fought later.
In 2014 Putin grabbed Crimea. In broad daylight. With everyone looking on, Putin said, ‘I want that land, so I’ll take it.’
And we let him get away with it.
But seeing Ukraine’s enormous effort over the past year has restored our courage.
From the start of the war we supported Ukraine and yet it’s taken a while to increase the number and sophistication of the arms provided.
As Ukraine fought, we gave more and more support.
It was their proud resistance that moved us to add more help.
That effort has helped unite the West in opposing Russia. And it has hardened our resolve for the inevitable confrontation with China.
The benefits to us have been enormous.
And yet, all the while, even as our assistance to Ukraine grew steadily, there was something we weren’t willing to do. We were not willing to say to Putin, ‘do not fire missiles onto Ukraine from the protection of your own territory.’
We never summoned the guts to say that and so stand up to Putin.
The missiles have kept raining over Ukraine and we still have not provided Ukraine with the weapons to respond to such assault for fear of escalating the war.
On their own, Ukraine has devised arms that have reached military bases inside of Russia. But they have not had access to the longer range missiles we could provide and which would be…
