Trump, Putin

The intervention of the United States in World War II was decisive in the defeat of Hitler and his crazy dream. After the landing in Normandy, the balance tipped in favor of the Allies. Despite the misdeeds that successive governments of that country have committed throughout history, we cannot deny the invaluable benefit that it provided to humanity through its participation in that conflict.

The support that Joe Biden's government has given to Ukraine is in line with that involvement. Together with the governments of the European Union, the American government has made sure not to leave the country invaded by the Russian army alone. Thanks to that support and despite the disparity of forces, Russia has not been able to win the war in more than 1,000 days during which around 200,000 of its soldiers have lost their lives.

Unlike his predecessor, Donald Trump took the side of the Russian dictator and murderer as soon as he took office. He did not care that the latter was the aggressor; that the invasion had resulted in 12,654 civilian deaths, including 669 children, and 29,392 injuries, including 1,854 children; that 45,100 soldiers from the invaded country had died; that there were 3.7 million displaced people inside Ukraine and 6.9 million refugees abroad; that 2,200 attacks on hospitals and health centres had been carried out; that 3,600 schools and universities and more than 2,000 civilian structures had been damaged; that the invaders had murdered defenceless civilians after torturing them and raped hundreds of women.

We know that Trump is a criminal declared by a judicial authority and a failed coup leader; that he sexually abused women; that he committed fraud; that he cancelled funds for humanitarian projects – USAID, HIV patients, burned babies – and is breaking up Latin families. What I did not imagine is that he would turn his back on the Ukrainians who have fought heroically in defense of the independence and integrity of their country, who have seen loved ones die, and who have endured the nightmare of the invasion for three very long years.

The majority of Americans voted for the bearded man, but they did not give him a blank check to do whatever he wanted, except such a vile move. The best citizens should come out to protest this betrayal. They should honor the best democratic traditions of their country.

Russia's crimes against humanity against the Ukrainian population go back a long way. In Red Famine : Stalin's War on Ukraine, Anne Applebaum reports that official reports indicated that 10 to 20 Ukrainian families were dying of hunger every day, train stations were crowded with fleeing villagers, and there were no horses or cattle left in the countryside. And they blamed the bourgeoisie, which had caused, according to informants, a real famine, part of the capitalist plan to turn the peasant class against the Soviet government.

“But the famine was not the work of the bourgeoisie,” she notes. The Soviet Union’s disastrous decision to force peasants off their land to join collective farms, the eviction of the richest peasants from their homes, and the ensuing chaos were policies that brought rural areas to the brink of starvation. At the height of the crisis, organised groups of police and party activists, driven by hunger and conspiratorial and hate-mongering rhetoric, raided peasant homes and stole everything edible. Nearly four million Ukrainians died of starvation.

This was not collateral damage from bad public policy, but deliberate: Stalin wanted to force Ukraine to abandon its aspirations for an independent country. The famine was only half the story: anyone connected with the short-lived Ukrainian People’s Republic (which existed for a few months from June 1917) who had promoted the Ukrainian language or history, anyone with a literary or artistic career of their own could be publicly vilified, imprisoned, sent to a labor camp or executed.

By siding with the war criminal and profiting from the plight of the invaded country, Trump is complicit in Putin's crimes and once again shows his immeasurable moral misery.