Start peace talks with Russia from strength
A Ukrainian soldier gives thumbs up near Bakhmut, the site of the heaviest battles in Ukraine's Donetsk region onTuesday. Credit: AP/Libkos
On May 10, 1940, Nazi Germany invaded Belgium and the Netherlands. That very same day, Winston Churchill became British prime minister and, as matters worsened, was under pressure from his own party, particularly predecessor Neville Chamberlain and Foreign Secretary Lord Halifax, to negotiate with German leader Adolf Hitler and accept Italian Prime Minister Benito Mussolini’s offer to mediate. He refused.
Churchill knew that Hitler could not be trusted and that appeasing him would only delay the inevitable. As he said at one point: “An appeaser is someone who feeds a crocodile, hoping it will eat him last.”
Peace negotiations with Russian President Putin should be conducted in earnest, in good faith, be binding and made from a position of strength and unity, lest we find ourselves to be the entree at the last supper [“Zelenskyy digs in on fight,” News, March 7].
— Ed Weinert, Melville
The history of mankind is littered with war. The battle for Ukraine adds another chapter to a regrettably lengthy novel filled with tragedy and the ruin of souls.
The world watches as a megalomaniac commits mass murder upon a country of innocents. Russian President Vladimir Putin is the villain, the one man accountable for the execution of thousands of humans who essentially wish to live their lives in peace.
What happens to Putin when this chapter in world history comes to an end is painfully obvious. He will go about his business of authoritarian rule, and the world will continue to do business with him. It’s how it always goes.
One day, he will be gone, but not soon enough for the people of Ukraine or the young Russian men sent to their deaths at the direction of this ultimate evil. Man’s inhumanity to man continues across the centuries.
— Bob Bascelli, Seaford
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