Russian attack on a U.S. drone underlines why we must help Ukraine win

By Trudy Rubin

Whether or not to help the Ukrainians drive Russian invaders out of their country is rapidly becoming a 2024 campaign issue.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis says aiding Kyiv is not a vital U.S. interest, and dismisses the brutal Russian invasion as a "territorial dispute" with Ukraine. Meantime, former President Donald Trump says if he were reelected, he would negotiate a deal that let Russia take over Russian-speaking parts of Ukraine. (Most Ukrainians speak Russian.)

So, even though the coming months will be critical for Ukrainian efforts to roll back the Russians, the political debate over aid to Ukraine is bound to grow in 2023. Vladimir Putin will try to sway that debate in Russia's favor, with risky machinations like the Russian downing of an unmanned U.S. drone over international Black Sea waters on Tuesday. MAGA House members and Fox News host Tucker Carlson will stir up the GOP base by repeating Kremlin talking points.

This is why it is more crucial than ever for President Joe Biden, along with bipartisan leaders who understand the war's broader meaning, to clearly explain to the American people why the outcome of this conflict is so important to the United States.

For starters, labeling this war a "territorial dispute" betrays a stunning indifference to history and facts.

On Feb. 23, 2022, Ukraine was living within its internationally recognized borders, while Russia was illegally occupying Crimea and part of Ukraine's Donbas region, both of which it had seized in 2014.

On Feb. 24, 2022, Russia invaded the whole of Ukraine, and now occupies about 15 percent of the country.

This war is the consequence of a blatant attack on a peaceful country by an aggressive Russia. It is an attempt to regain a part of the former Soviet empire by eliminating independent Ukraine and annexing it to Russia. This kind of interstate aggression has not happened in Europe since Adolf Hitler began invading neighboring countries, kicking off World War II.

Imagine if Mexico invaded California or Spain seized Florida in order to regain former imperial territories ― would DeSantis refer to such aggression as "territorial disputes"?

Moreover, Putin's invasion has goals beyond empire-rebuilding. As Sergiy Kyslytsya, Ukraine's ambassador to the United Nations, told me, "This war is not about territory."

For the United States, Kyslytsya contended, the war is about finally confronting a threat that has been sitting there for 20 years: Putin's resentment of the West and desire to prove that a declining Russia is still a great power, even if force is necessary to recreate Moscow's historic domain.

In 2004, the Kremlin tried to kill democratically elected Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko with dioxin. At the 2005 World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Yushchenko told me in an interview how his traitorous chef had poisoned his soup and then fled to Moscow.

In 2008, Putin invaded the country of Georgia, formerly under Soviet rule. In 2014, he first invaded Ukraine.

Having failed to seize all of Ukraine, the Russian leader now seems bent on wrecking the country and waiting for the West to tire of supporting Kyiv. Then he would press the West to squeeze Ukraine into accepting a deal that leaves Moscow controlling key parts of the country, while negotiations drag on indefinitely.

This would be the kind of "frozen conflict" that Europe and the Obama administration endorsed after Russia's 2014 invasion. Yet Russia undermined ongoing negotiations to resolve the conflict, kept trying to expand its partial occupation of the Donbas, and organized a new war eight years later.

"Rewarding bad behavior with more land (again) would only lead to more bad behavior," former NATO commander Gen. Philip Breedlove told the Council on Foreign Relations Wednesday. Western permission for Russia to keep key parts of Ukraine would only encourage Russia to regroup and try for the rest later while targeting other European countries.

"The U.S. has forgotten that our security depends on European security," said Breedlove, referring to two past world wars fought to preserve democracy against dictators. "We need to create a world where we don't reward the seizing and holding land of neighboring countries."

Abandoning Ukraine would embolden an angry Putin allied with China (which is watching the Ukraine conflict closely). The Russian leader would believe he could try to dominate Eastern Europe, and undermine the Western alliance. If violence succeeds in Ukraine, he will use the same methods again.

And yes, the Europeans need to do more to arm Ukraine, but few Americans are aware of how much they are doing.

Those who argue in favor of abandoning Ukraine will point to the Russian attack on the MQ-9 Reaper drone on Tuesday as proof that it is too dangerous to provoke Putin. Yet Breedlove argues ― and I agree ― that "fear of escalation is what Putin wants. It is his most useful tool."

Over and over Putin's propaganda stresses the danger of nuclear war and World War III ― even though it has become clear that he won't risk using a tactical nuclear weapon. Right now, he is clearly bluffing. Yet the longer his Ukraine war is allowed to drag on, the greater the risk his tactics could lead to unintended consequences.

One last point: March 20 will be the anniversary of the start of the 2003 Iraq War, which many critics of helping Ukraine say should dissuade us from more aid to Kyiv.

I spent months covering the Iraq War over a period of eight years, and it couldn't be more different from the Ukraine war. Iraq was a civil war between religious factions that the Bush administration got sucked into because of delusions about the U.S. military's ability to remake the Middle East.

In Ukraine, unlike Iraq, Ukrainians are doing the fighting, united in the desire to preserve their country's independence against a Russian leader who wants to drag Europe and America back to the worst days of the Cold War.

Also, unlike Iraq, almost all Ukrainians want to be part of the West and are a terrific ally to Europe, NATO, and the United States in standing against future mischief by autocratic Russia and China.

This is the message that the White House and responsible GOP presidential candidates and legislators need to push loudly to the public ― to drown out the pro-Putin rhetoric from the MAGA crowd.

Trudy Rubin (trubin@phillynews.com) is a columnist and editorial-board member for The Philadelphia Inquirer. This column was distributed by Tribune Content Agency.