Marching in local parades with “Yoopers for Ukraine,” I was profoundly struck by large spontaneous outbursts of applause at the Chassell Strawberry Festival, the many eager takers of the Ukrainian flags we passed out at the Parade of Nations, and most recently the proud sight of the Ukrainian flag carried alongside the American flag by the color guard leading Hancock’s Heikinpaiva parade.

Yet, every week as we protest Putin’s invasion of Ukraine at the Portage Lift Bridge, there will always be two or three people passing by who will shout out “Go Putin!” or “Yay Russia!”

It’s bizarre to me; when dozens or hundreds of news organizations in the American, British, French, Polish, and German news media are all telling pretty much the same story, and even the India news media and Al Jazeera are likewise in agreement, these people choose to trust the Russian news media… the one bunch that is definitely, without a doubt controlled directly by the government of the aggressor nation! I can only attribute this foolishness to an adolescent spirit of “rebellion for the heck of it” that was never quite outgrown.

Some folks will point out that Ukraine was killing ethnic Russians in the Donbas region over the last several years. Well yeah… after 2014 when Putin sent political agitators and unmarked mercenary militia groups into the Donbas, armed with heavy weapons. We are not talking about a few cases of rusty AK-47 rifles here; Putin sent in tanks, and artillery, and missiles capable of knocking civilian airliners out of the sky in mid-flight. Of course any nation is going to fight a civil war to preserve itself against rebel groups, just as the USA did under Lincoln and Russia itself did against Chechen rebels not so long ago.

Similarly, some claim that the USA, NATO, or Ukraine were somehow threatening Russia. But obviously, relatively small Ukraine was not “surrounding” vastly larger Russia. Obviously, our NATO allies such as timid Germany (who we can barely get to donate defensive tanks) were not hankering for war with Russia. And obviously the war-weary USA, sick of decades of fighting tribesmen in Afghanistan, was not eager to emulate the Russia-invasion failures of the brilliant Napoleon or the mighty Hitler. No, Putin did not invade Ukraine because he thought America or NATO or Ukraine were threats to Russia, he invaded precisely because he felt we were NOT threats.

John W. Loosemore

Hancock