Belgium, (Brussels Morning Newspaper) The most striking thing to me in January of 2023 is how any human being would watch a horrific terrorist attack on civilians, see the death count, hear people screaming for their lives under rubble, see bodies of children being pulled out from under tons of concrete and still feel justified in their decision to stand with Russia.
One must ask themselves – Who are you standing with? Terrorists? Murderers? Who are you standing with?
Yesterday, I sat down to write about something inspiring – Ukraine plays host to so many talented artists, scientists, inventors, painters, poets, composers, writers, and dancers that it would really be a shame not to tell you about them, while I have the chance.
There are in fact so many everyday things you have in your life that actually originated in Ukraine or were invented by Ukrainians. We’ve just celebrated Christmas, for example; the whole world is listening to the Carol of the Bells composed by Ukrainian Nikolay Leontovitch.
Your hard drive was co-invented by a Ukrainian Lubomir Romankiv. The world’s largest aircraft was designed by Oleh Antonov. Antithrombotic prosthetic heart valves were invented by our famous heart surgeon, Mykola Amosov. The “Father of the world helicopter industry” and the first helicopter designer is Ukrainian Igor Sikorsky. Elie Metchinkoff is the preeminent author on fundamental studies on immunology, bacteriology, and epidemiology and she hails from the small village of Kharkiv.
Do you use WhatsApp, Grammarly, PayPal, Snapchat, or GitLab? They all either started in Ukraine or started by Ukrainians living abroad. And this is just the tip of the iceberg. Their legacy and our lives are in jeopardy.
But a few days ago, another diabolical massive missile attack was launched by Russian terrorists against Ukrainian civilians; every Ukrainian, like me and my family, watched all day and all night the events unfolding in Dnipro, a city that lost a lot of its citizens due to Russian terrorism.
Russia started bombing us early in the morning. At 6 o’clock the Kyiv region woke up to the sound of multiple massive explosions – Russian terrorists were bombing the capitol with C-400 missiles. Unfortunately, these types of missiles cannot be either detected or shut down, as they are fired very close to the border and need very little time to reach the target.
Later in the day, Putin’s killers launched massive missile strikes from their aircraft attacking Ukraine from different parts of our border. Of the 38 missiles launched, 5 were x-22, a long-range supersonic cruise anti-ship missile – impossible for our current air defense system to shut down.
The attacks also happened during Saint Basil, a great day of celebration in Ukraine, a beloved holiday when people gather with their friends and family, cook very generous amounts of food, practice festive traditions and just enjoy each other’s company. The Russian missile struck apartment buildings and in no time, reduced them to rubble, when most of the families were at home celebrating.
When first responders and people from neighboring streets got to the scene they were stunned: the dust was covering everything in sight, yet you could hear people buried alive screaming for their lives from under the rubble.
Never in my life have I heard anything as horrifying… Never.
As seen in some heartbreaking videos, you can see firefighters signaling people and then everything goes quiet, you could not hear a single sound, as hundreds of people stood still – listening, praying to hear another voice cry out for help.
Let’s be clear – Russia is a terrorist state. Anyone standing with Russia is unequivocally supporting terrorism. What would be enough for the world to see that those who aren’t standing up to Russia’s evils are complicit?
Those who are turning their heads away and think that simply not looking at our genocide will make it go away will soon enough find themselves proven wrong.
Putin tried and will try again to create food insecurity in the world and starve Africa in the process, by the way, in doing so furthering a migrant crisis. He threatens to freeze Europe, literally killing thousands of Europeans during this cold winter. He is threatening to launch a nuclear attack against those who are helping us…So, who are you standing with?
All of the support for Putin’s terrorist regime will have significant consequences. For all of us.
In practice, all of us need to start making hard decisions about our choices, as our future, the future of the world as we know it, depends on it. The goal is as clear as day: defeating the Russian terrorist regime. We need to all come together and act immediately and not wait until we reach a point of failure and of no return.
Dnipro has announced a three-day mourning for those killed in the Russian terror attack.
We will be joining them and lowering our flags to pay our respects to our heroic citizens.