I’m both appalled and frightened by Allen J. Davis and Tom Weiner’s June 9 opinion piece, “Stop double standard; tell truth about Ukraine.”

Appalled not out of disagreement with their viewpoints — the Recorder does our community as great service by publishing opinion pieces across the spectrum, and we all learn from reading columns that show the world in a different light. Rather, I’m appalled that the authors would cast their opinion, repeating Kremlin propaganda to a T, as truth — a truth that they insinuate Ukraine and the West deliberately ignores or distorts for their own gain.

Let’s just look at facts, and not at perceived grievances or motivations for action. A year and a half ago, the Russians invaded a neighboring sovereign nation and began a brutal war, committing endless inhuman acts and war crimes. They bombed maternity hospitals, kidnapped children, destroyed infrastructure, put the whole of Europe (and their own citizens) at risk of a nuclear disaster, and changed the rationale for the invasion countless times, as if testing slogans with a focus group.

As alleged pacificists and educators, David and Weiner claim the truth is that Russians were somehow forced to invade Ukraine, to realize their interpretation of the 1990 diplomacy that followed the fall of the Berlin Wall. And because war is always wrong, these armchair advisers watching comfortably from a safe distance suggest that Ukraine should roll over, cede its territory, lose its language and culture, and become pawns of the Kremlin.

It is fact, not opinion, that the negotiations undertaken by Mikhail Gorbachev and Helmut Kohl (and James Baker on the U.S. side) were fraught, with both the Soviet Union — a country that no longer exists — and the West focused on their own self-interests. However, the negotiations revolved not around determining permanent static boundaries for military alliances on the European continent, but rather focused on the unification of East and West Germany.

NATO expansion to the east was not debated, a fact that Gorbachev himself reiterated in a 2014 interview. It may be true that Gorbachev was misled, or proved to be an inferior negotiator, but what was agreed was absolutely necessary at the time. Later expansion of NATO also became necessary. NATO is a defensive force, not an offensive one, and to be effective has to evolve to changing realities on the ground.

These realities include the facts that in the intervening years, not only did the Soviet Union fall apart (through no fault but their own), but the Russian government that emerged committed multiple hostile acts: brutally suppressing the Chechens, illegally annexing Crimea to protect their strategic Black Sea fleet, threatening ex-Republics including Moldova and the Baltic states, and even terrorizing Scandinavian countries with aggressive overflights.

This comes on the heels of decades of brutal Soviet occupation of Eastern Europe, suppression of fights for freedom such as the Czech uprising of 1968 and the Hungarian revolution of 1956 (which my father fought in, and for which he had to go into exile). And let’s not forget the Russian mistreatment of their own citizens, from the Stalinist regime up until the present day. I suppose Davis and Weiner would say that Hungarians and Czechs taking up arms to fight their oppressor, or modern-day Russian opposition to the Kremlin, is also unjustified, given that it is anti-pacifist?

As to why I am frightened, when opinion pieces like Davis’ and Weiner’s are written in such a way that they claim to throw light on how the public has been duped, it only inflames the anti-establishment crowd and reduces support for Ukraine. Perhaps that was the intention. Though their opinion piece manages to dismiss the pain felt by the millions of people who have had firsthand experience of Russian aggression, I’m sure that Putin approves.

Tundi Agardy lives in Colrain.

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