50 Days - Ukraine Stands
Or Why Greatness of Spirit Trumps Military Might
It has been fifty days of Vladimir Putin's "special operation:” but Ukraine stands; Fifty days of horror, but Ukraine remains unified, strong, and resolved; Fifty days and Kyiv has not fallen, Oddessa proudly flies the blue and yellow, and Mariupol though holding on by a thread, yet holds on.
It has been fifty days and the people of Ukraine have emerged as a source of inspiration to the world. Fifty days and this ancient people who once lost five million souls to the Russian Holodomor genocide of Stalin, today remain undaunted in the face of new Russian atrocities. Fifty days and the eyes of the world look with tears and wonder at the underdog nation holding a sling as it stands defiant before a well-armed boastful giant.
President and Mrs. Zelenskyy attending a memorial service before the onset of the war.
Fifty days and Zelensky yet lives. Think about that. Despite assassination attempts and Russian missiles launched at the capital, the elected president of Ukraine has not been silenced. For fifty days, Zelensky has modelled nerves of steel. He has been a paragon of focused leadership. For each of the fifty days, he has used social media to deliver an inspiring personal message of resilience and hope to 44 million of his besieged brothers and sisters. Incredibly, in the span of fifty days President Volodymyr Zelensky has spoken face to face, personally and directly, on behalf of his embattled country, to more foreign heads of state, parliaments, and legislatures than any other man in recorded history. It simply has never been done this way before in such a short span of time at such a scale.
For fifty days, Russia has engaged in an unprovoked, illegal act of brutality and aggression against a sovereign nation and its people. For fifty days, the carnage of the Russian army against civilians has been on display to the world. The invaders have proven their loyalty to the old Soviet-style doctrines of dezinformatsia, physical, psychological, and sexual terrorism as a means of subjugating a people who will not submit.
For fifty days, the most capable state propaganda machine in the world has daily attempted to deflect and cover up a holocaust of their creation in Ukraine by telling lies so creative and far reaching that they make the work of Herr Goebbels appear junior varsity. But this time, Putin's reign of terror can not be hidden as it was in Chechnya.
Mass graves, burned bodies and civilians executed by Russians were found throughout Bucha.
The Russian crimes of the last fifty days have been and are continuing to be documented through state of the art technology, eye witness accounts of thousands of survivors, captured audio recordings, satellite images and geolocation, photographic and video evidence, independent research organizations and on-the-ground reporting of diverse news sources from around the world. The evidence is indisputable, overwhelming, consistent, and can not be denied by the rational.
Here is what the witnesses and the evidence reveal: Over these fifty days, Russians soldiers have raped vast numbers of teenage girls, afterwards killing many of them and leaving their bodies in heaps. They have raped mothers in front of children. They have sodomized boys. For fifty days, Russians have tied and bound large numbers of civilians, including fathers and sons, and shot them execution style in the neck. They have targeted children, maternity wards, train stations, hospitals holocaust museums, and national monuments and treasures for missile strikes. They have machine-gunned infants and toddlers with their parents in cars trying to move past checkpoints. They have run over living humans with tanks. They have thrown the dead like refuse in mass graves, burnt their bodies or simply left them on the street. For fifty days Russians have destroyed tens of thousands of civilian homes, left cities desolate, forced eleven million people to leave their homes and four million to flee the country as refugees. To hide their crimes in places like Mariupol, Russians take the bodies of murdered civilians to their crematoriums on the territory of occupied Khartisyzsk where they burn the human evidence. In sum - the last fifty days have proven that the New Soviet Russia is likely the greatest criminal state of the modern era.
Russian mortar aimed at civilians took the leg of this fifteen year old girl.
Nor has the last fifty days reflected well on the United States. Incompetence and philosophical error on the Left, and unhinged Russian propaganda-inspired conspiracy mania on the Right have presented America to the world as a nation crippled by infighting and petty debates. The Biden Administration’s foreign policy of capitulation, appeasement and fear best represented by the the costly and rapid withdrawal from Afghanistan, has sent the message that the USA can no longer be taken seriously on the world scene. Perhaps this monumental projection of weakness and schism is the precise reason why Putin felt freedom to launch his campaign of horror against Ukraine in 2022, rather than in 2020.
And for fifty days Ukraine has sent a message to this polarised and petty America which has forgotten its roots. They have reminded us what it means to set aside secondary squabbles in order to stand unified in the cause of freedom.
They have also sent a message to Vladimir Putin. From the 70 year old babushkas emerging from bombed out homes, to school teachers who now carry anti-tank weaponry, to families spending weeks seeking refuge in basements, to refugee mothers protecting their babies in camps at the border — the people of Ukraine have a unified message: “We will never surrender. Never. And we will beat you. We are a people with an identity and with faith in God who will not be subjugated. Invaders take note - When you sleep, we will find you. When you trample villages leaving trails of carnage, we will emerge from the trenches and bushes. We will hunt down every murderer and seek justice. If necessary, we will stand with wooden spoons before Russian tanks. We will fight and we will die if need be, but we will not be Putin’s slaves.”
“Invaders take note - We will never surrender. We will emerge from the bushes and trenches and drive you from our land. ”
For fifty days the people of Ukraine have under unimaginable difficulties, demonstrated a strength of will and largeness of heart with no equal among the nations of the world. Ukraine is now the global standard bearer for courage and solidarity.
They have modelled the principle that true greatness does not come from military might, but the power of the spirit. This passionate and invincible spirit of Ukraine has allowed the tiny Eastern European nation to turn their moment of deep despair, into their finest hour. They have done what was previously believed to be impossible - thwart a Russian invasion and humiliate the enemy on the field of battle.
In so doing Ukraine has reminded the world that unity and heroic defiance in a righteous cause allows underdogs with slings to defeat favoured giants with swords.
This is why Ukraine will not lose.
Douglas W. Phillips is a constitutional attorney, writer and filmmaker whose great grandfather was a Jew fleeing Russian soldiers when Ukranian peasants spared his life, hid him and raised money for his escape to the United States.
Images of traditional Ukranians by ethno-photogapher Anna Senik.
