Every morning I check the news to see if President Zelenskyy is still alive. He remains so, thankfully. He represents as noble an effort, as principled and as dear in human value, as I have witnessed in my lifetime: the desire of a people to be themselves in the present and to be even better in the future—against the greatest odds. And not only has Ukraine fought the good fight, they have known remarkable success, even to the point where the world itself is now threatened by a humiliated despot who prefers to live in the past, or the illusion or delusion of one.
The public opinion of my own country begins to waver in its support of this effort given the enormous human cost and the scale of economic disruption. Winter portends, and the prospect, however remote, of a nuclear incident inspires both prudence and cowardice, sometimes disguised as pragmatic punditry. We have long since forgotten, as a nation, the meaning of real hardship and sacrifice and risk. (We dole this hardship out to limited populations here, often those least deserving additional hardship.) We know nothing, have known nothing of the experience of war that Ukraine has faced these two hundred and twenty days. Their response to the Russian invasion has shown courage, intelligence, patience, and no little wit. I trust in those virtues and hope we continue to support them.
