Ukrainian resistance needs guns: Give them more!

Ukraine is fighting for all of Europe. Some are reluctant to call this  "World War III", but I cannot imagine calling the invasion of Ukraine anything else. Remember, the Russians invaded Crimea - a Ukrainian region, in 2014, and nothing was done to stop Putin's aggression.

Echo opinion published in Aljazeera by Emir Suljagic

Dear brothers and sisters in Mariupol,

I spent three and a half years of my life where you are now – completely encircled by enemy troops bent on my people’s wholesale destruction. I am familiar with the anguish, frustration, fear, and desperation that you must be feeling. But let me give you the good news first: You will prevail. There is no doubt in my mind that Russian troops will never conquer Mariupol.

Pray for Ukraine Iron On Patch, Glory To Ukraine Patch, I stand with Ukraine patch.

For one thing, they do not have the manpower to do so. It takes a lot more troops to occupy and control a city of more than 400,000. The Serb forces in Bosnia and Herzegovina laid siege to our capital of Sarajevo and shelled it for three and a half years, without ever managing to enter. The Russian armed forces do not have the fighting spirit and are nowhere near the determination of the defenders of Mariupol.

I am no military professional or military historian, but I maintain that the Ukrainian military is the best fighting organization in the world at this time. The Russian military is simply not willing or capable of paying the price to occupy your city.

Let me also give you the bad news: Sadly, you will pay for your freedom with your lives and the lives of your loved ones – your brothers, sisters, mothers and fathers. With every step, you will lose those you could not imagine your lives without. This is not just a war between Russian invaders and Ukrainian defenders. This is an attempt at politicide. The Russian goal is not just to conquer Ukraine, but to wipe Ukraine, as a state, off the map, relegating your history, culture, and people to a footnote in the history books to be written by the future likes of Ivan Ilyin and Aleksandr Dugin.

Now, let me tell you about what comes after. For you, it is never going to be over. This war has already hijacked your lives and the best you can do is embrace the fate that has been thrust upon you. History has been unusually cruel to you. In this war, you are fighting not only for yourselves but for future generations that are yet to be born. It is a crushing burden that you have not asked to bear. To make matters worse, you are also fighting this war on behalf of an ungrateful continent that cares more about warming up its homes with Russian gas than saving your children from bombs and starvation.

Whatever you do, there is one notion you should never entertain: laying down your arms. As we learned from the Serbs in Bosnia, the Russians can only exterminate you – and they certainly will – if you are unarmed. Allowing yourselves to be disarmed is the quickest way to a mass grave.

Indeed, historically, the Russian military is no stranger to this precept – recall for instance the Katyn forest massacre of 1940. Your own history is also full of examples of Russian brutality. The alternative to fighting off the present Russian invasion is something akin to Holodomor. You are paying with thousands of lives to avoid losing millions.

I know this is difficult to remember as Russian artillery is raining down upon you. I know it is of little to no consolation to the many thousands of children displaced in Ukraine or in refugee camps who will grow up without their parents. Having lost my own father to the ravages of war, I know exactly the gaping hole in the heart that this loss results in. However, I must say that I have only come to fully appreciate my own father’s sacrifice after witnessing the tremendous bravery of Ukraine’s people. I hope that this holds for you at least some meaning and tells you of the enormous inspiration that your courageous fight has been to the entire world.

There are many parallels to be drawn between our war for Bosnia and your war for Ukraine. In the 1990s, we too were fighting against a larger neighbor, ruled by a deranged autocrat who sought to rob us of our lives, freedom and identity as a distinct and sovereign people. However, the dissolution of Yugoslavia was of far less consequence beyond the region than the fight for Ukraine. The fate of the world is literally being decided on the Ukrainian chernozem (

A destroyed Russian military vehicle lies in front of an Orthodox church in the Ukrainian village of Lypivka on April 11. (Efrem Lukatsky/AP)

Ukrainian black soil: Chernozems form 67.7% of agricultural terrain in Ukraine – 67.7% and have almost completely been converted into arable lands. Ukraine has a leading place in the World in a land and soil resources availability per person.)

Unfortunately, the old adage that geography is destiny seems to be true. In that respect, the only thing worse than sharing a border with Serbia is sharing a border with Russia.

Finally, you need to know that we see you. You are not fighting in the dark. When this is over – and it will be over, when the Russians have withdrawn in shame and defeat, I hope to come to Mariupol to listen to your stories, because that is all that you will be left with. When this is over, I hope to come to a free Mariupol and a free Ukraine to pay homage to your sacrifice.

Emir Suljagic is ex-deputy defense minister of Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Stop Russian atrocities: war crimes in Ukraine

Echo opinion published in The Washington Post:

The scale of Russian atrocities in Ukraine is staggering

Horrifying images from Ukraine spark renewed calls for war crime investigations- execution of Ukrainian civilians.

Moscow’s forces are now close to stamping out the last military resistance in the besieged port of Mariupol and have launched at least the initial phase of their long-awaited offensive to seize the country’s eastern Donbas region, according to an announcement Monday by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. This phase is likely to see a different kind of fighting than the failed Russian campaign to take Kyiv, the capital. Instead of urban combat, there will be more fighting in rural areas, over open ground, among tank and artillery units. Fortunately, the United States and its allies have managed to supply Ukraine with at least some heavy artillery, tanks and rocket launchers, though it still needs more.

What probably will not change, however, is the brutality with which Russian soldiers conduct themselves toward Ukraine’s civilian population. Between their officer corps’ lack of tactical finesse and the dehumanizing training conditions they tolerate for rank-and-file soldiers, Russia’s forces have earned a reputation both for indiscriminate bombardment of urban areas and for up-close-and-personal cruelty wherever they have fought in the past quarter-century: Chechnya, Georgia, Syria and, now, Ukraine.

The atrocities revealed after the Russian retreat from Kyiv’s suburbs are not surprising in light of that history, but they shock the conscience nonetheless. Some 900 civilian bodies have been found, most of them shot dead at close range, according to local police. The corpse of one Ukrainian resident of Bucha, Ivan Monastyrskyi, had bullet holes in the calves and “his arms were stretched out at strange angles between slats of wood with nails through them,” according to a report in The Post by Louisa Loveluck and Serhiy Morgunov.


The mayor of Mariupol has estimated that at least 21,000 civilians have died in the Russian siege, though that cannot be verified independently. His assertion that bodies were “carpeted through the streets” of Mariupol would seem extravagant but for Russia’s use of artillery and bombs against hospitals and schools — and the fact that independent journalists and human rights observers who have visited places such as Bucha have, indeed, found bodies lying in their streets.

Russian war crimes in Ukraine are atrocities.

Russia’s way of war, in short, includes war crimes. Certainly the record of President Vladimir Putin’s previous campaigns offers no hint that anyone in the chain of command will be held accountable for excesses. To the contrary, confronted with unmistakable evidence of its troops’ culpability, Russia regularly issues official propaganda asserting that its enemy, in this case Ukraine, has actually committed the atrocities so as to blame them on Russia.

Any decent end to this conflict would include a full investigation and punishment for war crimes. A realistic view, however, must acknowledge that actually putting Mr. Putin and his fellow perpetrators on trial is an aspiration, not a likelihood. Nevertheless, the world must not lose sight of Russian atrocities in the fighting to come, which, even when conducted outside of Ukraine’s cities, will put farmers and villagers in Russia’s path at risk. Russia’s behavior can and should motivate both Ukraine’s defenders and its supporters in the West to do anything within their lawful power to stop Russia from achieving its ends.

Evil war criminal Vladimir Putin

Putin reveals himself as a war criminal and dictator:

Vladimir Putin wearing layers of bullet proof vests in staged fake rally to spread misinformation-propaganda about the Ukraine invasion.

Echo opinion letter published in the St. Louis Post Dispatch:

Regarding “’Why? Why? Why?’ Ukraine’s Mariupol descends into despair” (March 16): The world has finally witnessed the unveiling of the real Vladimir Putin, as an evil manifested in the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

He is a despicable, abhorrent dictator who’s trying to resurrect the old Soviet Union and cares not a bit how many innocent people his Russian troops slaughter. 

Terrorists shelled Mariupol neighborhoods with Grad rocket systems. Houses destroyed. There are killed and wounded. Source: https://censor.net/en/n321396

Putin rules in the same mold as despots like Joseph Stalin and Adolf Hitler.

Since Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014, Putin has sought to make freedom-loving Ukraine into a Russian puppet state. I doubt if sanctions will stop Putin, just as they haven’t deterred North Korea or Iran. Evil people like Putin understand only one thing: force.

Evil Putin is a war criminal who has now become a pariah, and hopefully one day he will be brought before the International Court of Justice and tried for crimes against humanity. In the meanwhile, Ukraine continues to teach the world a valuable, profound, lesson in bravery and courage.

From Gene Carton, in University City, an inner-ring suburb of the city of St. Louis, in Missouri.