Three years ago, we left our apartment in Kyiv “for a couple of days.” I didn’t know then that it was just the beginning of the bloody massacre Putin started to establish his dictatorship in Russia.
I could not believe that my country would go so far: destroying cities, killing thousands of civilians, and threatening to destroy the entire world with nuclear weapons.
And of course, I had no idea that this horrible war would last so long. So long that people in Europe would vote for parties demanding cheap Russian gas, like AfD in Germany, which received 10 million votes in yesterday’s election. So long that the U.S. president, instead of supporting Ukraine’s defense, would demand his share of the exhausted country’s resources, tearing Ukraine apart together with Putin.
In 2025, many people are tired and want to stop the war by any means. And I, thinking about the hundreds of soldiers killed and thousands wounded every single day on both sides, pray for a ceasefire and peace talks. But unfortunately, stopping it now means accepting Putin’s crimes, making him even more dangerous for the world.
Western countries should not send Ukraine just a couple of old rusty tanks or a few boxes of bullets to slow down the Russian occupation—they should provide Ukraine with modern, powerful weapons to protect innocent people and then start negotiations with the murderer in the Kremlin. Otherwise, in couple years from now we will have another war on post-Soviet territory and another casualties.
