Just as diplomats at a last-minute United Nations Security Council meeting were pleading for peace, Russian fire began raining down on Ukraine. 7NEWS
On a haunting night, marked by an address from Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky that felt like a eulogy for a democracy, decades of peace between nations on the EuropeanWithin hours, livestream video showed a column of military vehicles streaming into the country from Belarus, where Russian troops had been massed.
President Joe Biden will unveil the most punishing set of sanctions ever imposed against Russia when he addresses the nation later on Thursday local time. His reference to Nazis raised the idea of political purges and suggested a mindset seemingly verging on paranoia.It was the surreal moment when a leader traumatized and obsessed by the collapse of the Soviet Union, which he witnessed as a rank-and-file KGB officer in former East Germany, launched a battle to avenge forces of history and erase the freedoms and democracy of a people of an independent, sovereign nation.
And since Putin had been demanding pullbacks from NATO in ex-Soviet satellite states that had joined the organization, this is America’s crisis too. More broadly, Putin’s attack on Ukraine is another challenge to America’s global power and the concept of a free and democratic world that multiplies its influence.
Pleading with the people of Russia in their own language, Zelensky said: “You are being told this fire will free the Ukrainian people. But Ukrainian people are free.” Putin has long chafed against what he sees as disrespect from America following the Cold War and NATO’s eastern expansion to encompass ex-Soviet allies like Poland, Romania and Hungary.
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