The air raid siren in Odesa, Ukraine, didn't wake me. It's sometimes too easy to get used to what should never be normal.
Russia had no reason to invade Ukraine in February 2022. The reasons Vladimir Putin gave, having to do with his view that another people do not exist, have the whiff of genocide. The invasion itself is the crime of aggression.
For nearly two years, Russia has committed countless war crimes. These are not just what happens in war. The filtration camps, the kidnaping of children, the executions of civilians – these are all atrocities, and they are all illegal. Russia has no excuse for sending rockets, cruise missiles and drones into Ukrainian cities.
In Odesa last September, the day before I had visited a cathedral – hit by a Russian rocket. I wanted to go to an outdoor cafe – hit by a Russian rocket. As it turned out, the cruise missile that night was headed not for this southern city but for the port of Izmail.
Russia has been using its drones and cruise missiles to target Ukrainian ports and storage facilities, to try to prevent Ukrainian foodstuffs from being exported to Africa and the Middle East, where of course they are needed.
Russian cruise missiles and Russian drones (often supplied by Iran) are regularly used, especially in cold weather, to target Ukrainian civilian infrastructure. This is a possible war crime. It's not just what happens. It is a deliberate decision, made in Moscow, to make civilians suffer and die by denying them electricity and water in wintertime.
This happened last winter, and it is happening again now.
These realities make the politics as usual in Washington infuriating. It's very easy for us to help the Ukrainians win this war. What we supply them amounts to about a nickel on the Defense Department dollar. Most of that is spent in the United States, on American industry, paying American workers.
Stop the arms manufacturers:Much of the weapons technology used by Russia and terrorist factions originates in the West
In fighting the war, Ukraine is performing an extraordinary service to Americans. It is fulfilling the entire NATO mission, absorbing and halting a full-scale Russian attack. It might be deterring a Chinese offensive in the Pacific by showing how difficult offensive operations can be.
We have no excuse for treating any of this as normal. What the Russians are doing in Ukraine is a test for the whole international legal order and for people who say they care about freedom. What the Ukrainians are doing to protect legal order and freedom in general is extraordinary.
When Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy was in Washington recently, he was told whom he needed to thank. As an American, this makes me very uneasy. It is we who need to learn to thank our friends.
It is the Ukrainians who have been, in the millions, turned into refugees. It is the Ukrainians who have, in the tens of thousands, been killed or wounded on the battlefield or by those rockets, drones and cruise missiles. It is the Ukrainians who are fighting this war.
And it is the Ukrainians who can win it – if the U.S. government does what it should.
In the meantime, we can all help.
In Ukraine, there is a strong tradition of what is called civil society. This means doing what the government doesn't do, filling the the gaps or helping the government do what it should be doing. This Ukrainian government understands that it needs support, and not just from other governments.
War crimes and atrocities:Ukraine needs help to hold Russian war criminals accountable
I was approached by United24, President Zelenskyy's funding platform, and agreed to help raise money for a very special project. The Ukrainians have developed an ingenious way to detect drones and cruise missiles in the air, which, when implemented, allows them to be shot down.
In the first stage of a campaign called Safe Skies, thousands of people have helped to fund this drone detection system. It is now being installed in four Ukrainian regions, home to about 4 million people: Kherson, Mykolaiv, Odesa and Sumy.
I visited the first three of those regions in September. The drones are real. The cruise missiles are real. And they are terrifying weapons of murder. But they can be stopped. And we can help.
The goal of the current stage of Safe Skies is to raise funds to extend the drone detection system to another four Ukrainian regions, home to about 6 million people.
We can set an example for our own politicians. And we can bring a bit of peace at the beginning of 2024 to a people who have suffered greatly.
Timothy Snyder is an American historian, writer, professor at Yale University and United24 ambassador.
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