Bajun Mavalwalla: Support for Ukraine should be total

By Bajun Mavalwalla

Michael Baumgartner does not deserve credit for supporting Trump’s capitulation to Putin’s demands in Ukraine. His public statement, about his concern “for the children,” demanding the return of thousands of children kidnapped by Russian forces from Ukraine is insincere and rings hollow if you have any background in Russian history.

The Russians’ idea of negotiation is to say “Da… but Nyet.” (This is not something new and harkens back to U.S. – Soviet negotiations with Foreign Minister Andrei Gormyko during the Cold War). Putin’s economy is a huge Potemkin Village centered around oil exports, an oligarchy and a massive, government-sponsored organized crime industry. But the only two guys who don’t seem to know this are the president and our own Congressman Michael Baumgartner.

Russia is NOT an undefeatable juggernaut. In the middle of World War I, millions of Russian troops simply laid down their rifles, left the trenches, and walked home. Some of them thousands of miles. In Afghanistan they quit after losing only 15,000 troops. And in Finland they found that a small, but determined, force could not be dominated by Russian brutality.

Americans should understand after Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan that all our economic and military power can be exhausted by small, undeveloped countries.

But Ukraine is neither small nor undeveloped. In fact it is the second largest country in Europe and has a military too powerful to defeat, a population too big to dominate and an area too large for Russian forces to occupy. Russia is learning that its massive size which defeated both Napoleon and Hitler has a mirror image: Its size makes moving its own forces, equipment and resources thousands of miles to Ukraine almost as big a drain as the war itself. Then, once it does, those troops, trains, aircraft, fuel storage and other logistical supplies end up concentrated and within range of Ukraine’s highly creative and much better trained and motivated military.

Ukraine should not accept the American-backed Russian demand for territory under any circumstances. Baumgartner’s proposal for the return of kidnapped children is laughable on its face if it weren’t for the terrible reality of the Russian war crimes involved. Worse, it feeds into the wrong-headed idea that the United States should capitulate to Putin’s demands like when Neville Chamberlain handed over the Sudetenland to Hitler in 1938: A year later Germany invaded Poland. And who had struck a “deal” with the Nazis? Russia. The Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact divided Poland and Russia invaded from the East.

In America we rarely teach about the devastation World War II brought to Ukraine. We don’t teach about how Russia had already starved 5 million Ukrainians to death during the 1932-33 Holodomor. We forget that after the Nazis killed over a million Ukrainian Jews – that Russia came in killing tens of thousands more of the Jews that remained.

Russia will not return Ukraine’s children except by force.

Last year, I took congressional candidate Dr. Bernadine Bank to Ukraine. One of the places we went to was Irpin where I first stayed in 1992 as an interpreter with the National Guard. The Russians plowed through killing indiscriminately and blasting homes and buildings at will. While the Ukrainians are quick to rebuild, the devastation can still be seen today. Over the years I’ve made many trips to Ukraine. I will happily go again with Congressman Baumgartner and let him meet the amputees, widows and orphans who are still determined to defeat Putin – if we’d only let them.

Bajun Mavalwalla is a retired Army Intelligence Officer and a graduate of The Defense Language Institute’s Russian school. He served in Iraq and Afghanistan and resides in Valley, Washington. He has recently formed an exploratory committee for a possible run for the House in the 5th Congressional District.