Indrek Lillemägi

Three years ago on this day. Soldier Oleksandr Matsiyevsky had his last cigarette at his surrounded dugout, shouted “Glory to Ukraine!” and was executed by Russians on the spot. He lives on with us all forever ever since that day. Absolute hero of our age.

You know what the single most profound, far-reaching effect of Russia’s war against Ukraine is? Ukraine has finally learned to truly respect itself. We are no longer some godforsaken "Russia's backyard", where corrupt mafia clans don’t dare to make a sound without the Kremlin’s permission, and where everyone lines up to lick Moscow’s boots. We are a nation that, in just a few years, built from scratch a capable army — the one that is now heroically fighting Russia, one of the largest military powers in modern history. To stand up to such an adversary in the biggest war of our time, Ukraine has been sustaining World War I-scale mobilization and made revolutionary breakthroughs in military innovation. Today, Ukraine possesses one of the most capable armies in the world, with cutting-edge, real-time experience in modern warfare—able to resist an enemy that is vastly superior in everything. We have preserved a democracy and a brutally competitive political life like neither Russia nor any of its satellites country ever had. Our president, once a populist comedian, has grown to be a leader of the free world—someone applauded by entire nations in the halls of St. Peter’s Basilica. We are no longer the punchline of imperial Russian jokes. No longer “village bumpkins,” no longer “little brothers.” We have finally remembered who we are—descendants of the ancient Slavs, the Vikings, the Zaporizhian Cossacks. Our capital is not a provincial town but a sacred, ancient Christian city—the beating heart of this part of civilization. And its holy sites belong to us. No one else. We no longer feel ashamed of our language or our culture. No longer do we see them as “backward,” “provincial,” “second-rate,” as Moscow has insisted for centuries. We have long since broken out of Russia’s cultural orbit: there’s no more garbage Russian pop music on the radio, no endless cop shows from Moscow on TV, like we endured for decades. Instead, in the midst of war, we’re witnessing a cultural renaissance unprecedented in our history—Ukrainian music, cinema, and literature are flourishing. In Kyiv, tickets to classic Ukrainian plays are sold out six months in advance. We’re no longer a patchwork “post-Soviet country,” split between a “Russian-speaking southeast” and a “Ukrainian-speaking west.” We are a united nation. A person from Dnipro and a person from Lviv now share the same values, the same mission, the same grief, the same culture and history — and the same enemy. People from Kharkiv fight the Russian invader just as fiercely as those from Ternopil. No one laughs anymore at the idea of a Ukrainian navy— our naval drones have humiliated the Russian Black Sea Fleet. We shoot down enemy fighters. Our drones and missiles now strike oil depots, airfields, and ammunition bases across Russia nearly every night. Ukraine is no longer a country you can show up to, toss some exploitative resource deal on the table, and sneer, “Sign this — you’ve got one hour.” No. Now you’ll be escorted out of the room with your hands shaking — and only after that will a balanced, civilized, mutually respectful agreement be negotiated. Yelling and threats no longer work here. We are a country whose Chief Mufti has volunteered to become a combat medic at the front. Our Chief Rabbi works daily to advocate for Ukraine around the world. His son died in combat, defending Ukraine with a weapon in his hands. Ukraine is now holding our ground — honorably —against a whole axis of evil: Russia, Iran, and North Korea. And Russia has suffered devastating defeats and drained its once-vast Soviet stockpiles of weapons and ammunition. And along the way, we’ve shaken up global politics. We’ve earned the trust and support of dozens of nations. We’ve broken through walls of Western fear, hesitation, and passivity, the appeasement. Ukraine’s victory in the Battle of Kyiv in 2022 changed the course of European history when the best military minds were giving us 72 hours. You can’t imagine how often we still find ourselves saying to each other, half in disbelief: “Can you believe this? Who would’ve thought our poor Ukraine was capable of this?” What more can I say? Ukraine has already proven itself a great nation. We have countless enormous problems—and they’ll require titanic effort to overcome. But if we endure this war of annihilation, this country will have glorious future.

Now that the Biden admin is leaving the stage, it's time to say what needs to be said. It is 100% true that without U.S. aid, Ukraine as we know it would not have been around by now. And it would have been occupied, partitioned, annexed by Russia, subjected to "filtration actions" (yes, that involves torture chambers, incarceration camps, and mass graves), and become the scene of an indefinitely long guerrilla war. And we are forever thankful for that. But - let me suggest an all-encompassing answer on why Biden's policy towards Russia's war in Ukraine is sadly a major setback and a painful scar on Biden's legacy. The Biden administration thought it could outsmart the laws of history. They thought they could go the easy way about the largest European war of aggression since WWII. Without a doubt, the Biden administration did everything possible to dissuade Putin from invading Ukraine through persuasion and diplomacy before February 24. The Kremlin blatantly disregarded these humiliating pleas and launched the war, as it was solely focused on war and the rapid subjugation of Ukraine from the very beginning. The massive heroism of the Ukrainian army and the sensational defeat of Russia near Kyiv in 2022 presented the entire free world and the Biden administration with an extraordinary historical opportunity to repel and contain new large-scale aggression in Europe—without a single shot fired by the U.S. or NATO troops. However, instead of fully arming Ukraine alongside European allies to ensure the decisive defeat of the Russian aggressor, Washington recoiled at the prospect of Putin's defeat and his incessant nuclear threats, choosing instead the path of self-restraint and "escalation management." They never wanted any conflict with Russia, and they decided that instead of helping Ukraine undermine the aggressor's very ability to fight a large-scale war, they chose to impose myriads of unfathomable limitations of the Ukrainian acquiring and the use of U.S. aid — in a bid to very painfully slowly lift those limitations and grabble a moment to "bring Putin to reason" and make him stop ASAP and return to business as usual. There was never a good reason to try and please Putin's "feelings" and "red lines" and make Ukraine beg for every single weapon type, only to eventually provide them at least a year too late when the situation in Ukraine became desperate again. There was never a good reason to listen to Putin's daily nuclear threats and spend months and years vehemently denying the possibility of Ukraine getting ATACMS missiles, PATRIOT systems, armored vehicles, advanced radars, or F-16 jets (which greatly affected the European aid, too) for the sake of avoiding "major escalation," only to see that such procrastination only encourages and emboldens the aggressor. There was never any rationality in trying to please Putin and bring him back to reason by holding Ukraine back from striking key military targets inside Russian territory, only to eventually see that this doesn't work with Putin and lift limitations years too late. There was never a good reason to wait until the final days of Biden's presidency to finally impose crushing sanctions on Russia's financial system and oil trade, which have been badly needed for years. Appeasement and attempts to weasel an easy way out did not end well in 1938-39, and they don't work now. You can't reason with the unreasonable, and there is never a moment when the aggressor stops and says, "Okay, I've had enough; I'm leaving you alone; I now see I was being unreasonable." The Biden administration's reluctance and attempts to outsmart how history works seriously undermined the U.S. investment in helping Ukraine bring about a just peace. It gave Vladimir Putin over two years to recover from 2022's failure, reshape and mobilize its military, ramp up military production, adapt to international sanctions, unfold the wartime economy, and find allies among fellow rogue regimes. It stripped the Biden admin of what could have been one of the greatest foreign policy wins since the end of the Cold War. Moreover, this brought us to a place where various grifters, demagogues, and Kremlin-paid loudmouths raise their voices, spitting on Ukraine, spreading hateful disinformation, and openly propagating the elimination of Ukraine as a nation. Going the easy way never works out well. One can hope that the next U.S. administration will learn from those mistakes and stop trying to outsmart history at its own peril, but that's poor naive me. Support my work on PayPal: saint.anger1992@gmail.com