Marco Levytsky, Editorial Writer.
Christmas is the time of year we celebrate the glory of God and the birth of His Son Jesus Christ who assumed a human form so He could come down to Earth and save us from sin. It is also a time to pray for peace on earth and goodwill to men. Never in most of our living memories has this become more important than this year.
Brutal wars are raging all over the world, many of which, like Amhara, Sudan, Yemen, Ethiopia, Azerbaijan and Syria get little or no international attention. Currently the world is focussed on Gaza, where, following a terrorist attack by Hamas on Southern Israel in which 1200 civilians were brutally murdered and 240 taken hostage on October 7, Israel has proceeded to bomb virtually the entire 360 square kilometre Gazan enclave into rubble.
As of December 11, over 18,000 Palestinian civilians – 70% of them women and children – have been killed and more than 46,000 wounded, according to the territory’s Health Ministry, which says many others are trapped under rubble. About 2 million Palestinians have been displaced, most of them crowded into a refugee camp located in a 20 square kilometre safe zone in the southeast corner which has no running water or bathrooms, with assistance and international humanitarian groups nowhere to be found, and tents providing little protection from the coming winter's cool, rainy weather. In a joint statement dated December 7, 27 aid organisations including UN agencies and their partners issued a call for an immediate stop to the fighting, stressing that the situation in the war-torn enclave is becoming “apocalyptic” with hostilities making meaningful humanitarian efforts “nearly impossible”.
The crisis in Gaza is truly horrendous, and deserves the attention it is getting, but while world attention is focused there, we must not forget Ukraine. The war in Ukraine is the worst conflict to hit Europe since World War II. The actual war has lasted almost a decade and the full-scale invasion almost two years. During this last phase hundreds of thousands of people have been killed. An August report by the New York Times, citing anonymous U.S. officials, put the Ukrainian death toll at close to 70,000 and the number of wounded as high as 120,000. The UN said last month that more than 10,000 civilians had been killed.
Estimates of Russian casualties run from 320,000 to 380,00 with the number of dead anywhere from 50,000 to 120,000. But Russian dictator Vladimir Putin doesn’t care. Human life means nothing to him. He will let as many of his own citizens die as are necessary to wipe Ukrainians off the face of the earth.
Throughout this full-scale invasion Russia has committed almost every war crime imaginable. It has destroyed critical infrastructure like power plants hoping to freeze Ukrainians to death. It has kidnapped thousands of Ukrainian children in order to sever their connection to their homeland, strip them of their Ukrainian identity, deny them a Ukrainian upbringing, and compel them to be raised as Russians in the homes of adoptive parents forced upon them by Russian state authorities. It has tortured prisoners of war in unspeakably gruesome ways. It has blocked shipments of grain from Ukraine leaving millions to starve in some of the poorest countries. It has destroyed the Kakhovka Hydroelectric Power Plant in the Kherson region flooding thousands of hectares of the world’s best agricultural land. Even more agricultural fields have been saturated with land mines preventing farmers from harvesting crops.
It is truly a battle between light and darkness, good and evil, David and Goliath. That alone is reason enough to support Ukraine to the fullest degree. Yet another moral imperative is that the United States, the United Kingdom and the Russian Federation pledged to guarantee Ukraine’s security and territorial integrity in the Budapest Memorandum under which Ukraine gave up its nuclear arms.
But that is not all. Russia’s imperial psychosis threatens the security of the whole world. A Muscovite victory will also encourage other rogue nations to commit aggression. It will also boost nuclear proliferation to unprecedented heights.
Yet “Ukraine fatigue” is sweeping the democratic world.
A recent study by the Kiel Institute for the World Economy has revealed a significant decline in Western aid to Ukraine. According to the study, newly pledged aid from August to October 2023 was at its lowest since January 2022, having decreased by almost 90% compared to the same period in the previous year. And in the United States, Republican senators recently rejected a bill which would have required 60 out of 100 votes to extend Ukraine aid by $60 billion. As a result, money earmarked for Ukraine could run out by the end of this year.
President Joe Biden has warned that if aid to Ukraine is stopped, U.S. troops may end up on the battlefield. “If Putin takes Ukraine, he won’t stop there. It’s important to see the long run here. He’s going to keep going. He’s made that pretty clear. If Putin attacks a NATO ally — if he keeps going and then he attacks a NATO ally — well, we’ve committed as a NATO member that we’d defend every inch of NATO territory. Then we’ll have something that we don’t seek and that we don’t have today: American troops fighting Russian troops if he moves into other parts of NATO,” he said.
The Biden administration says that around 60 percent of Ukraine spending has stayed within the U.S. borders, but Washington Post columnist Marc A. Thiessen says “of the $68 billion in military and related assistance Congress has approved since Russia invaded Ukraine, almost 90 percent is going to Americans, one analysis found.”
There is increasing international pressure for a negotiated agreement – one which would require Ukraine to make territorial concessions. That would reward Moscow for its aggression, and condemn millions of Ukrainians to suffer the most brutal form of captivity.
The end result must not just be a peace – but a just peace. A just peace means an end to all Russian aggression in Ukraine and the return of every Russian soldier back inside Russia’s 1991 borders. A just peace means that all war criminals must be brought to justice. A just peace means that Russia must pay reparations for all the damage it has inflicted upon Ukraine. A just peace is also one that will eliminate the imperialist psychosis from the Russian mentality once and for all.
So, this Christmas pray for peace like you have never prayed before. But pray for a just peace – only that outlives us all.
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