Russian situation is beyond peace

After attending this week’s Theology on Tap event, I wanted to share an eastern European perspective on the crisis in Ukraine.

I am a first-generation Polish American. And because I am Polish, I am also a Catholic. I also believe wholeheartedly that my ancestor’s resilience against Russian colonialism is ingrained in me.

The message told at the event that concerned me, along with my first-generation Ukrainian American roommate Elena, was pacifism.

In American academia, we are taught that the worst person to live during the past 100 years was Adolf Hitler, when Joseph Stalin murdered a lot more people during the same time period. How America has turned a blind eye to Russia’s genocide and colonialism is beyond me.

Russia is not a country you can make peace with. The only country in Eastern Europe that believes this is possible is Belarus, and that is because they are a dictatorship being run by Russia itself.

Russia has time and time again over the past hundreds of years inflicted nothing but atrocities on my people. You cannot tell me that a war against Nazi Germany is just, yet a war against Russia is not. The two countries are the same in many ways, with Russia being worse.

We know that Russia is beginning to commit genocide against Ukrainians. We have seen what they have done and what their intentions are. Now is not the time to be a pacifist, not when millions of lives are at stake. Putin himself said that he wants to go back in time.

In the past, Russia not only killed millions of people but they have also tried to kill eastern cultures and languages in order to spread Russian nationalism. Examples of this include the Katyn Massacre, Operation Vistula and the Chechen War.

The First Chechen War happened in the 1990s. Chechen is an area in Russia that rebelled, and Russia in reaction killed 80,000 of its own civilians and half a million became displaced. The war lasted a few years. What I am trying to say is that this war happened not that long ago, and the Russo-Ukrainian situation is much worse. Russia will hold out for as long as they can as they did in Chechen. Peace-making is not on their radar.

I believe that to solve the Russian issues we are currently faced with, there needs to be an overhaul of the entire Russian government. I think there needs to be a Nuremberg Trial 2.0 with Russian politicians in the hot seat. Russia’s government won’t be fixed unless it is rebuilt from the ground up because its government is still rooted in authoritarianism and nationalism.

The Russian people deserve a government that celebrates their culture and doesn’t take advantage of it.

But I can’t help but be a pessimist about all of this, and I blame Russia for that.