July 4, 2024
Social Media Manager
If you speak English on the street in Ukraine, it’s not uncommon for strangers to stop and ask where you’re from. Many times when I’ve said I’m American, people (ranging from teenagers to the elderly) have thanked me for my country’s help.
I’m forever grateful to be a U.S. citizen, and proud to be from the same place as the incredible American soldiers, medics, journalists, and humanitarians I have the privilege to work alongside. I go to bed every night confident that I’ll wake up in the morning because the sky above Kyiv is protected by U.S.-supplied air defense. In the 11 months since I moved back to Ukraine, I’ve developed a new appreciation for both the life-saving power of America’s resources and our cultural dedication to justice and freedom.
However, one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to learn is how well our politicians are able to weaponize our fatigue and turn it into apathy at best, and conspiracy at worst. I think back to learning about Hitler in school, and how we all swore that if we were alive in the 1940s, we’d be the ones who recognized evil and worked to stop it. And yet there is currently a dictator committing genocide in Europe with the aim of expanding his country’s borders indefinitely, and our top presidential candidate is indicating that his strategy for stopping it is to hand Vladimir Putin what he wants.
A woman uses her phone to light a dark public transport stop in Kyiv, Ukraine, on Nov. 11, 2022. The Russian forces carried out massive missile and kamikaze drone attacks on Ukrainian energy infrastructure. (Sergei Chuzavkov/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images)
Putin has said that he’ll stop the war if Moscow is allowed to annex four Ukrainian oblasts (states) – a particularly shocking demand, given that few of these areas are fully occupied.
This is like if Cuba took control of Key West, killed and raped Floridians en masse, flattened every city up to Tampa, and our solution was to hand over the entire state. If Russia stops attacking Ukraine, the war will end. If Ukraine stops defending itself, it won’t exist, and neither will the world as we know it.
To my fellow Americans: I’m writing to you on July 4 from Kyiv during one of the few hours of electricity we get these days thanks to Russia striking the power grid, where fireworks are banned because there are enough explosions to contend with.
I’m not here to tell you what or who to vote for this fall – I’m not you, and I know that both options are concerning in their own right. The only thing that I ask is that you believe me when I say that the greatest threat to America’s safety, freedom, and future is Russia. The only thing protecting us is Ukraine, the only thing that will enable Ukrainian victory is military aid, and in no way does Ukraine take this fact for granted.
When you vote, please know that your tax dollars don’t go to President Volodymyr Zelensky – they go to the American manufacturers who make the ammunition that goes into the guns held by Ukrainian husbands, brothers, and sons who don’t want to die in this war. If Donald Trump signs away Ukraine, tens of thousands will have died for nothing, and thousands more will be next – and not just in Ukraine.
I’m not being hyperbolic or doom-mongering here: as someone who has been reporting on Russia and Ukraine for years, right now I’m more afraid for the future than I’ve ever been.
If you’re reading this from America, I hope that you never hear the sound of an air raid siren. I hope that the people you love are never mobilized for military service that has no end date. I hope that you never learn just how much a human brain can become accustomed to, to the point where the neighborhood hit by a missile at 8 a.m. is forgotten by lunchtime. I hope that you never let a billionaire convince you that you don’t need to be worried about the massive black cloud moving straight toward you.
Happy 4th. I love America and I know that we can do the right thing. My biggest fear is that we’ll simply choose not to, and the consequences will follow us for generations to come.
X; which should of course be renamed Z as it’s a component of the putler war machine, has claimed Bellingcat is “spammy.”
“X marks Bellingcat investigation into Russian hospital strike on Kyiv as ‘potentially spammy or unsafe.’
https://kyivindependent.com/x-marks-bellingcat-investigation-into-russian-hospital-strike-on-kyiv-as-potentially-unsafe/
This ls the type of American’s l would like to confront ln Ukraine…. l say you speak harsh of Trump, but where ls your Biden, having Cream/
lf not for 2014, allowing putlyker to take CRMEA , as Biden and Obama did, we would not be having these issues now.
lt was American’s who disarmed us.
Pootin pretty much already had Crimea, as it had already increased it’s forces well beyond imposed limits. There was no organized resistance, and the rashists overwhelmed it. Clinton screwed over Ukraine by altering agreements, obummer made it worse with agreement to liquidate stock piles and not allowing lethal aid. As for Brandon and trumpty-dumpty I’d rather have Biden on his worse day, than Trump at his best Bo.
You just admitted the American democrats disarmed Ukraine…which s a fact.
Biden still disarms Ukraine as he will not allow American missile to attack lnsde Russia/bases..
Do you think we have a death dream ????
For Putin t’s like shooting fish n a barrel because of Biden…
So when ls Biden going to vote “Yes” to allow Ukraine lnto NATO???????
Your common sense has left you
When did you become a citizen again?
Setting limits is not same as disarmament. I’m fully in favor of lifting any restriction for provision or it’s use against the genocidal rashist regime.
Your “shooting fish in a barrel” is reminiscent of kremlin propaganda.
Ukraine will get into NATO WHEN THE WAR IS OVER!
When did you come to this country exactly?
lof you’re for that, bill, you’re against Biden, as he’s the one stopping Ukraine from attacking and killing Ukrainians
2016
He catches on slow but he will get there. I wish there were better choices.
Were you discharged before coming to the U S.?
It was bipartisan fyi, both parties enabled it. Aren’t you the least bit concerned that The Constitution you had to memorize, is in dire jeopardy?
l am, and have been for the last four years. due process s a byg concern after watching the NY debacle
Unlike ln the soviet union, now Russia, you’re guilty till proven innocent, the same a ny
If you can’t do the time, don’t do the crime.
trumpkov was tried by a jury of his peers, and found guilty of 34 counts of felony. Unlike in the soviet union, here *nobody* is above the law.
Program was to destroy unserviceable ammunition by the way. It was briefly paused during covid, but was started up again during the Trump administration.
Then President Yushchenko agreed to the ammunition destruction.
President George W. Bush signed into law the proposal by Democrat Obama and Republican Lugar.
Intervention by PM Tymoshenko broke a logjam within Ukrainian government bureaucracy on August 29th 2005 to have Ukraine cooperate in all aspects of the Nunn-Lugar program.
Info from the Bureau of International Information Programs, U.S Department of State.
What’s that? It’s the “Nunn-Lugar program”? Not the “Obama-Lugar program” or the “Biden-Lugar program”?
🙂
Correct, I didn’t look into whom Nunn was/is. Although obummer worked on it he didn’t get his name on the bill.
Senator Sam Nunn, of Georgia.
Thanks Sir Larry.😎👍
Dear Anonymous, I can’t stand Biden, and I would agree with your criticism of him in 2014, but for 2 things: 1) The VP ain’t the boss, and 2) You’re obviously a MAGA deluded into thinking Putin would never have invaded if Trump had been president. As Bolton has pointed out, if Trump had won the last election, Ukraine would no longer exist.
https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2022/03/how-trump-and-putin-have-been-allies-against-ukraine.html
https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/christophermassie/trump-called-russias-invasion-of-ukraine-so-smart-in-2014
a maga????
what happened to conservative??
would suggest reading the entre article from another media site, Bras
see from America cpac 🤔
Trump CPAC
“I thought President Putin was smart. I said, ‘Of course he’s smart,’ to which I was greeted with ‘Oh, that’s such a terrible thing to say.’ I like to tell the truth. Yes, he’s smart,” Trump said at CPAC. “The problem is not that Putin is smart, which of course he’s smart, but the real problem is that our leaders are dumb.” The military invasion of Ukraine ls “appalling” as well as an “outrage and atrocity,”
She’s too young, and American, to remember 2014 and the Revolution of Dignity, AND Obama going to the state of Florida, on vacation, when/during the Russians invasion of Crimea
She doesn’t do her research to understand it was Obama., after Clinton, who disarmed us when he was a Senator ln America.
Are these not the worst two presidential candidates America has ever had?
Yes, they are
Yes, they are.
Who else would you suggest?. Don’t say an American democrat as they stole all our/weapons, disarmed us, from 1994 onwards for Russia.
Haley would have been nice…