I met a Ukrainian today. He is my age. I met him at school drop off, our sons are in the same kindergarten class.
They recently arrived here from overseas. I welcome them, but I wish we had done more to help Ukraine.
There are numerous places in the world where people are being displaced by state violence, but I don’t think there’s anywhere that it’s being done by a global power so directly. It’s similar to Gaza/Palestine & Israel, but Russia can end the war by simply going home.
If we had been meeting our NATO obligations for the last 30 years, would this family have been driven out of their home? I don’t know. (I actually know almost nothing about their personal circumstances)
I just feel like we should have done more, and that it’s not too late.
I know as compassionate Canadians it’s hard to contend with Ukrainians losing their homes to Russian aggression. It’s major power vs. major power though, the main reason Ukraine is lacking is because Putin’s bootlickers in the US have helped Russia by stalling aid for so long, and even meeting NATO commitments for 30 years would have no discernible effect compared to that.
When looking at the Israel-Palestine issue, I think it would have been a better time than any for us Canadians to respond in the same way we did in the Suez Crisis in 1956, where UK, France and Israel invaded Egypt. It would have been excellent to take a stand and intervene not necessarily supporting Palestine or Israel specifically but to end hostilities and protect civilian life in a conflict where there is blatant disregard for it from Hamas and IDF military command.
Unfortunately we basically took the US’ position without saying so explicitly. And considering the way non-combatants, humanitarian volunteers and journalists have been murdered without consequence, it’s a hard sell as Canadians to sacrifice ourselves to the war machine.
United Nations Disengagement Observer Force (UNDOF) has been active since 1974 and mandated with exactly this.
I think that if all NATO members had met or exceeded their obligations, there would have been an obscene amount of weapons to supply Ukraine with, within weeks of the start of Russia’s invasion, and it likely would have been over immediately. As it stands right now, nobody has a meaningful stockpile. Of that stockpile, there’s no capacity to replace it. In terms of building new capacity, it would take years – because the process and equipment are so specialized that it can’t be hammered together in a weekend, a month, or probably even a year.