Ron Maxwell: Making Betrayal Great Again

Counterpoint: Making Betrayal Great Again

By cutting off military aid and intelligence sharing to Ukraine Donald Trump is betraying not just the Ukrainian people, but the Russian people as well.

The Russian people are surviving best they can inside a huge prison camp. There are none of the freedoms we in the USA take for granted. Simply to publicly criticize Putin's war against Ukraine is to risk a ten-year prison sentence. Reliable polling is impossible in a police state. Putin has re-imposed a level of oppression reminiscent of the Soviet era.

We know the names of the Russian patriots who spoke out against the Kremlin tyrant - first and foremost Alexei Navalny. We know as well what happened to them. They were openly murdered on the streets of Moscow and covertly murdered in the hidden confines of the gulag. Thousands of Russian patriots have fled Russia or simply gone to ground. But as we learned during the Cold War, there are millions of Russians who long for their freedom from this tyranny, who dream of a normal life at peace and in harmony with their European neighbors.

During the long years of the Soviet Tyranny, at the very least they knew that American presidents and the American people had not abandoned them. This gave them solace and hope. A hope moreover, that was realized when the Communist tyranny collapsed in 1993.

But in their darkest hour, even in the far reaches of Siberia, they could hear Reagan's voice as he courageously called out their oppressors as 'the evil empire.' They were emboldened and sustained during their solitary confinement when through Morse Code tapped through prison walls they could hear Reagan's voice when he proclaimed, 'Tear Down this Wall.'

For the brief interregnum of the Nineties the Russian people hoped for a better life, of freedom and prosperity. Many books have been written about the years between the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the re-imposition of Putin's police state. It’s far too much to revisit here. But soon after Putin took the reins of power, step-by-step he consolidated his one-man tyranny.

Alexei Navalny was assassinated for trying to peaceably change his government, as were many others. Thousands languish in Putin’s gulag. The Russian resistance may have gone underground, but they are still there in their millions.

President Trump is under the delusion that Russia is only Putin and his gang of Kremlin thugs. But Russia is much, much more than their oppressors.

Just as in the long nightmare of the Soviet Union, millions of patriotic Russians who love their country despise this tyrant who has sent tens of thousands of their sons to be sacrificed as bullet fodder for his insatiable lust for power and conquest.

They are deeply ashamed at their country's invasion of Ukraine, the destruction of its cities, the massacre of its people, the kidnapping of its children. But they can say nothing publicly for fear of the consequences to themselves and their family.

How do we know this? We know it from the tens of thousands who have fled, waiting for a better day to return. We know it from the dissidents themselves, still inside Russia, who are getting the truth out just as the earlier generation of dissidents did during the Soviet era.

By abandoning the Ukrainian people to Putin's savagery, Trump is also turning his back on the Russian people. Unlike Reagan, he offers them no hope, no respect, no recognition. For Trump, they don’t matter. Trump's only concern is to placate and appease their masters, their prison guards and their tormentors.

The Russians are a great people. They deserve better than their cruel dictator Putin and his ridiculous enabler Trump. It is not for us to liberate them. That is something only they themselves can do. But let’s at least show solidarity with them - not betrayal.

Ron Maxwell wrote and directed the movies ‘Gettysburg,’

‘Gods & Generals’ and ‘Copperhead.’

Photos: Alexei Navalny and Andrei Sakharov

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