AN INTOLERABLE ASSAULT ON SOVEREIGNTY

Ukraine must win this war. And all of us who believe in the right of nations to self-determination must do everything we can to ensure it does. The stakes could not be higher. A foreign power – two foreign powers, in fact, if today’s reports about Belarusian troops entering Ukrainian territory are correct – has violated a sovereign state. In word and violent deed, Russia has treated Ukrainian sovereignty with naked contempt. It has made a bloody mockery of Ukraine’s national independence and of all the rights and freedoms that are made possible by national independence. Citizenship, the right of a people to choose who governs them, the common cultural bonds that tie a nation and its inhabitants together – in Ukraine, all of this is now existentially threatened under the boot of Putin’s marauding forces.