Why do I support Ukraine in this War?

Nadin Brzezinski
7 min readSep 12, 2022
Knyshin before the war

One of the Twitter Ukrainian posters asked the rest of us why? It’s a relevant question. I am at home, with a roof over my head and warm food. No bombs are falling. So why should I support a country literally on the other side of the world?

It’s not like I am a decision-maker. Though I do contact my elected officials. I explain the issues because my training allows me to understand some of the nuances.

It goes beyond that.

Yes, been thinking about this since the current stage of the crisis started. I am ashamed to say it that in 2014 it was a passing thing. I should confess that we should have stopped Russian imperial goals before we got here.

Georgia should have been the wake-up call. Senator John McCain was correct. Syria had red lines that the Russian Army walked right over with little consequence. So of course, Vladimir Putin counted on the natural weakness of the West and our tendency to get distracted.

This is the big geopolitical reason.

But it’s more personal. I grew up in Mexico City. My parents met there after the war. My mother’s family left Byalistok during the Great War. One reason for this was to avoid the battlefields of World War One.

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Nadin Brzezinski

Historian by training. Former day to day reporter. Sometimes a geek who enjoys a good miniatures game. You can find me at CounterSocial, Mastodon and rarely FB