[The Life of Shaun #586] Freedom is their religion 🇺🇦

Sitting here at my desk, watching alerts on my phone about Russian troops getting ever closer to Kyiv, I am disheartened.  I keep thinking back to my trip there five years ago, and how I felt by the time I left.  You could tell that Ukraine was proud to have a chance to showcase itself to the world, to show that it's part of Europe, and that it wants to be part of the West.  I've watched the sign-off to Eurovision several times over the past two days, and it makes me ache for what the Ukrainian people are going through.

I also feel angry.  Angry that neither of my countries, nor the EU, are doing anything meaningful to help Ukraine.  The self-styled global protectors of democracy and freedom are standing aside, watching a modern-day Sudetenland, impotent.  Our neighbour in Europe, which we pledged to protect, is being invaded and Balkanised, having its democratically-elected government toppled, and we move a football match and freeze a portion of the fortunes of a few dozen kleptocrats.  Pathetic.

Not that America and Britain have much of a leg to stand on after our own false-flag war in Iraq.  But that's certainly no excuse for inaction; if anything, it's a chance for redemption.  But, like a century ago, the West is tired of war and Putin's accomplished a de facto Munich Agreement.  Poland must be hoping that history won't rhyme too closely this century.  And I expect China and Tawain are watching our inaction with equal levels of glee and horror.  Leaders of the free world indeed.

The Maidan, Kyiv, 2017.

Shaun H. Coley ~ Holloway ~ Islington ~ London N7 ~ UK ~ shaunism.blogspot.co.uk

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