Today’s threat is complacency

Dear Editor,

Our felon and chief reversed three years of western efforts to isolate Russia and help Ukraine fend off Russian and North Korean troops and thousands of Russian warheads. Marco Rubio and the Russian Foreign Minister met in Riyadh. There the officials agreed to restaff their embassies (closed by Biden) and consider joint ventures such as Arctic energy exploration. Rubio said ending the war would create “incredible opportunities” for the U.S. to partner with Russia. After three years of sanctions intended to defund Russia’s military, this administration wants to join into business partnerships with Russia! Does Trump feel an aggressor who attacks a sovereign nation that presented no threat to Russia, destroying it’s cites, infrastructure and killing and wounding a 100,000 Ukraines should be rewarded?

Over the past few weeks, while Ukraine was contending with Trump’s pause in our aid and intelligence, Russia retook almost all the territory held by Ukraine. This territory was intended as a bargaining chip to help end the war. Trump gave away other bargaining chips. He said Russia deserved some Ukrainian territory, because Ukraine started the war. They said Sleepy Joe was senile. Our felon and chief is a couple of steps from reality.

It’s reported during Trump and Putin’s recent phone call, he kept Trump on hold for an hour while laughing with Russian businessmen, bragging about his power over Trump. During the phone call, Putin pledged not to attack power plants in Ukraine, then he broke the agreement within the hour. Trump, who bullied Ukraine into painful concessions, simply accepted Putin’s refusal of a full cease-fire without complaint. Putin is playing our felon and chief like a fine fiddle, or a better descriptor would be a bass fiddle. Putin has broken dozens of agreements in the past. People now say you can’t trust Putin or Trump. Trump wrote a book “The Art of the Deal”. He needs to add a chapter “how not to negotiate with a ruthless dictator”. A dictator who sends dissidents to Siberian prisons, whose dissidents die of poisoning around the world and whose dissidents have mysteriously fallen from hotel windows.

Alexei Navalny was a dissident lawyer who brought to light graft and corruption in the Kremlin, making him an enemy of Putin. He survived poisoning then was sent to Siberia on trumped-up charges. He died last year. In the final part of Alexei Navalny’s prison diary, an account of the minutia of incarceration, Navalny describes the maddening bureaucracy of prison, the endless transportation between different cells, the sense of passing time, the sense of losing time, emerging friendships with fellow inmates, and the constant companion of hunger, to his final statement of faith in Jesus, who Navalny trusts to “take my punches for me”.

Democracies are fragile. Ours has lasted almost 250 years. It took a lot of honest lawmakers, judges, generals, presidents and a lot of lives given to protect this democracy. I believe the threat to our democracy today is our complacency.

— Tom Janicki
Almont