Eastward and westward storms were breaking upon Europe’s wintry steppes as 2022 opened — great, ugly whirlwinds of hatred and blood and cruelty. We in the comfortable West foolishly did not believe them inevitable.

Those who lived there stood firm and looked up and out saying “Death wins nothing here, its gnawing wings that amputate when spread, will be blown off, its flightless carcass rotting on our deep rich soil.”

From us, who have so much, these Easterners in their time of existential need do ask not for transportation to our wonderful cities, tickets to the good life and NBA game seats, to speak unaccented English in their new homeland, not even for us to buy them blue jeans and soft American white bread and delicate Extra Soft Charmin toilet paper.

They love us and our freedom but want nothing from us, save for ammunition. They have a lot of killing to do, in full knowledge that many will never meet and toast with their American benefactors.

The Russian wolf will come to fear the ensuing fire on these steppes.

Their faces

Ukrainian volunteers

For the last two plus weeks we Westerners have seen many of these eastern Europeans on our flatscreen smart TVs, phones and laptops. Many sport faces like the athletes from that region we see every four years or so aspiring to gold medals at the Olympics. You could almost discern the kind of sport they did by their body shape and injuries.

Well-built with a broken-nosed boxers, broad shouldered, torn-eared wrestlers, enormous muscled stolid-faced bodybuilders, quadratic headed weightlifters, tail, thin skaters and short track runners and short powerful legged gymnasts. Interspersed are more than a few old men and women who walk up to their invaders to curse them out.

After these brief weeks, all we here in the West now see them as Ukrainians.

Their invaders will now come to understand the old Ukrainian proverb — flies will not land on a boiling pot.

For these hungry-for-liberty people of the steppes, the word enough can and does not exist in the same sentence with freedom.

Ukrainian volunteers waiting for rifles and ammo to fight Russian Iskander missiles and T80 tanks

Copyright 2022 My Aisle Seat
www.vicsocotra.com