I was born in 2005. For my entire life, war has been waged—in fact, I’ve never known a time without it. It’s almost as though we are all conditioned to picture a scene in Iraq or Afghanistan when we hear the term “war,” where soldiers fight enemies hidden in plain sight and where IEDs and suicide bombers inflict the carnage that used to occur only in hand-to-hand combat. But then, a grandparent or great-grandparent would share stories of battles fought in France, Italy, or Belgium during World War II, and we would no longer picture deserted mountains with an unidentified enemy. Instead, we think about marble columned buildings shot up or civilians forced into subways to wait out the air raids from bombings. We think that kind of war is a relic of the past. But then, Vladimir Putin decided to wage his own demented version of Blitzkrieg and invaded Ukraine.
Our country was built upon the principles of liberty, freedom, and individual rights— privileges Ukrainians didn’t know until 30 years ago. Now, Russia is attempting to extinguish these freedoms to which Ukrainians have grown so accustomed, and Putin has committed himself to annexing a sovereign nation that has no wish to become a puppet state. Russia and Ukraine are in no way comparable to the Anschluss of Austria and Germany conceived in 1938.
Putin has delusions of himself playing the role of modern Peter the Great with a little bit of Stalin on the side. For the past 22 years, he has slowly stripped Russians of any freedoms they gained upon the collapse of the Soviet Union. Putin’s vision of modern dictatorship is not the same as that of other autocratic dictators like Xi Jinping or Kim Jung-Un, who seek to suppress their own people; instead, it’s a modern European version of fascism wrapped up in post-Soviet communism. Putin is the horseshoe theory personified: he shows us how communism and fascism have so much in common. Brutal suppression of criticism, latent anti-Semitism, and dreams of world domination are just a few similarities. Incidentally, Putin actually accused the Jewish President of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelensky, of being a Nazi who persecuted native Russians and used this accusation as a pretext to invade, similar to how Hitler used Jews as scapegoats.
We cannot allow for these dictators to do as they please. This is not what the world has come to. We do not allow dictators to topple democracies.
We need to show people like Putin that these kinds of actions are not tolerated. Weak sanctions are not sufficient in proving to Putin that the world is going to stand up to him. He continues his charade while innocent Ukrainian civilians continue to be killed and the world watches. The way to send a message to dictators like Putin is with swift and decisive action. Cutting off Russia’s oil and gas monopoly in Europe is a price we should all be willing to pay to free Ukraine. Paralyzing Russia’s economy is an effective way to bring about regime change by sparking demands for change among the Russian people from within.
Ukrainians are courageously holding their own, but for how long can everyday civilians and a much smaller Ukrainian national force fend off the might of the Russian army? This is a question we should never have to answer.
Refugees that fled the conflict from neighbouring Ukraine, await for transportation at the Romanian-Ukrainian border, in Siret, Romania, Sunday, Feb. 27, 2022. Since Russia launched its offensive on Ukraine, more than 200,000 people have been forced to flee the country to bordering nations like Romania, Poland, Hungary, Moldova, and the Czech Republic — in what the U.N. refugee agency, UNHCR, said will have “devastating humanitarian consequences” on civilians. (AP Photo/Alexandru Dobre) 
Refugees fleeing Ukraine queue at the border crossing in the Polish village of Medyka on Saturday. Photograph: Markus Schreiber/AP 
People offer rooms for Ukrainian refugees as people arrive on a train from Ukraine’s border at Berlin’s main train station on March 2, 2022. (Photo by Tobias SCHWARZ / AFP)
We all want to do something right now to help the people of Ukraine. They are in an impossible situation. I have been thinking about this a lot and have decided to put together money and supplies for Ukrainian relief efforts. I invite everyone to join me in my efforts to support the World Central Kitchen, which is providing hot meals 24-7 to the over 500,000 Ukrainian refugees who are fleeing the violence and Russian aggression in Poland, Romania, and the cities of Odessa and Lviv in Ukraine. They will soon be on the ground in Moldova, Slovakia, and Hungary too. I’m going to be collecting funds at lunch and after school as well as via my WCK fundraising page: https://donate.wck.org/fundraiser/3741119. Though I hope to raise $5,000, no contribution is too small. We all need to do our part to help, and I hope you will join me in doing what you can to help innocent people get a hot meal.
We are all students of history. We need only to look around at what is happening right now to appreciate how important it is to learn from the past and not repeat its mistakes. Putin must face consequences from starting his war, and the sooner he is cut off from the world he seeks to dominate, the better.
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