If demonstrations of solidarity could be turned into tanks, rocket launchers or fighter jets, then perhaps the situation in Ukraine would have been less desperate. Be that as it may, we see a lot of big words and a lack of useful military assistance. However, our politicians tell us that the horror we see in Ukraine is only the beginning.
After his recent telephone conversation with Vladimir Putin, the French President put it almost as the NATO Secretary General had said on Friday in Brussels: “It will get worse.”
Military experts predict that the Russian army will soon intensify the bombing and shelling of the civilian population. Pessimists fear that Vladimir Putin’s army will destroy the capital Kyiv, similar to the complete destruction of Grozny. At Putin’s behest, Russian troops turned the Chechen capital into a desert in 1999.
NATO cannot intervene
Faced with this horror, the Ukrainian President has repeatedly called for a no-fly zone over Ukraine. NATO responded again and again: “We can not do that!” It would mean a direct military confrontation with Russia and could provoke World War III.
Putin has already reminded us of his nuclear arsenal and hinted that he could make such extreme efforts to realize his delusion about a Greater Russian Empire that includes Ukraine. Man’s apparent absurdity in the Kremlin, his real or pretended insanity, is just another way to upset us.
Some observers believe that the Western alliance should be even more vigilant now in order to avoid a nuclear revelation. Even arms deliveries could be interpreted by Putin as crossing the red line.
The United States, on the other hand, believes that Putin must stop now so as not to “open the Pandora’s box” of greater war and instability, as Secretary of State Anthony Blinken put it. Like many Europeans, he assumes that Putin also wants to attack other countries: Georgia, Moldova and the Baltic states.
Western countries responded with the harshest economic sanctions they have ever imposed and did so faster than ever. But if we want to stop Putin’s invasion, we need to tighten the screws more. The EU has just announced it will cut ties with more Russian banks and cut off shipping and other imports early next week.
After that, the last resort is to stop importing oil, gas and coal from Russia. But that would hurt both of our western economies and jeopardize our domestic social stability. However, we may have to go there as all the other options would be worse.
We are financing Putin’s war
By continuing to buy Russian oil and gas, we are financing Putin’s war. Even though the first round of sanctions has paralyzed the Russian central bank, Moscow still earns hundreds of millions of dollars every day by trading with us.
Only when we turn off this tap, when Putin has absolutely no income and can no longer access his reserves, can he come to the negotiating table. But even these most extreme sanctions would not help Ukraine in the short term.
But in addition to sanctions, the often divided EU is exceeding expectations: it offers all Ukrainian refugees non-bureaucratic protection, and the overwhelming willingness to help is moving and moving. Europeans give money, weapons and extensive humanitarian aid to the people of their warring neighboring country.
In the end, we are watching Ukraine die
The people of Europe are doing what they can, in part because they feel that this war is an attack on all of us and on our liberal, democratic way of life. Because the incredible bravery of the Ukrainians also really shocked those who believed that securing a secure future could be done from the comfort of their own home.
But if he gets to the point where Putin really wants to bomb the Ukrainian capital, with its golden domes, its government palace, its heroic president Volodymyr Zelenskyy and its more than three million citizens on the ground, then we can only watch. .
This sense of helplessness, with our hands tied as observers of Putin’s assassination campaign, will be terribly bitter.
This article was originally in German
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