Why Ukraine's fight is ours, too

Winnipeg Free Press

4 days ago

Opinion
In the heart of Moscow, Stalin's shadow grows longer.
A replica of a 1950s relief sculpture — The People's Gratitude to the Leader and Commander — now overlooks a major metro station. The scene: Joseph Stalin in military garb, surrounded by adoring citizens. To many in the West, it may resemble nostalgia. It isn't.
As journalist Cathy Young writes in The Bulwark, 'The desecration of the memory of Stalinism's victims… is the obverse of the persecution of today's dissenters.'
Efrem Lukatsky / The Associated Press
Firefighters put out the fire after a Russian missile hit a residential building during Russia's combined missile and drone air attack in Kyiv, Ukraine, on June 17.
Vladimir Putin is reviving Stalin's legacy not as history but prophecy — recasting a brutal past to justify brutal acts today.
The attack on Ukraine is more than a land grab; it's an ideological assault on truth, memory, and democracy itself.
Across Russia, Stalin's image reappears in sculptures, textbooks, and state celebrations. Institutions that preserved memory — like the Gulag History Museum — are shuttered. Remembrance projects such as The Last Address are vandalized. Propaganda saturates the airwaves. According to the Levada Centre — Russia's most prominent independent polling organization, though operating under increasing state pressure — public 'respect' for Stalin has risen to 63 per cent.
Yet the message is clearest not in monuments, but in missiles. Since 2022, Ukraine has endured Bucha's massacres, deportations of children, and relentless bombardment. And still, they fight — not just for survival, but for the future of open societies.
Canada understands this. Across the political spectrum, every major party has backed Ukraine's right to self-determination. That unity reflects more than geopolitics — it reflects our national conscience.
In June 2025, Canada extended its tariff-free import policy for Ukrainian goods, reinforcing economic solidarity alongside its military and humanitarian aid.
The EU has provided over €30 billion (approximately C$47.9 billion) in support to Ukraine this year alone, while NATO has trained 75,000 Ukrainian soldiers and coordinated extensive military aid.
On February 24, 2025 — the third anniversary of Russia's invasion — European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen told Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy: 'You can count on us … we stand by Ukraine from the very first day on and you can count on us also for the future.'
Meanwhile, dissidents like Garry Kasparov warn that 'dictators test boundaries. When they see weakness, they push further.' And Masha Gessen has chronicled the rise of a regime fuelled by historical amnesia and 'state-sanctioned cruelty.'
Dmitry Muratov, Nobel laureate and one of the last independent Russian journalists, describes a reintroduction of Stalinist punishments: sleep deprivation, freezing cells, electric shocks. With bitter irony, he predicts a new Russian holiday: Punisher Day. In May, Muratov — still active despite being branded a 'foreign agent'— called for the war's largest civilian prisoner exchange.
Alongside this, the Tribunal for Putin initiative has documented more than 100,000 war crimes committed by Russian forces since 2022. The scale is staggering. And still, Ukraine resists.
Russia's ideological collapse is also documented in Our Dear Friends in Moscow by Andrei Soldatov and Irina Borogan, two acclaimed journalists now in exile in London. Their book traces how a liberal generation was slowly co-opted by the state. As they write, 'What we've experienced since 2011 is a series of actions and manoeuvres intended to detach Russia from the West.'
The Kremlin's war isn't only external — it targets its own people. As former Navalny campaigner Denis Mikhailov notes in Byline Times, Russia has 'digitized and legalized the machinery of exile.'
Opposition isn't just silenced — it's erased through surveillance, laws, and psychological pressure. Exile is no accident. It's state policy.
Here in North America, such horrors may seem distant. But history doesn't need an accent to repeat itself.
In the U.S., democratic norms are fraying, from book bans to political violence to mass deportations of undocumented migrants.
Disinformation spreads, cynicism deepens, and polarization corrodes civic trust. Conspiracies no longer lurk — they mobilize.
Complacency isn't passive — it's an accelerant. And self-righteousness? It doesn't protect democracies; it weakens them.
As George Orwell warned in Nineteen Eighty-Four, 'Who controls the past controls the future.' If we fail to defend truth and memory — whether in Kyiv, Winnipeg, or Washington — we undermine democracy itself.
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The war in Ukraine isn't just about borders. It's about how democracies remember, reckon, and resist.
If we fail Ukraine, we don't just fail a nation — we fail an idea.
Ukraine reminds us that democracy is not inherited. It is defended — sometimes in trenches, sometimes in archives, and always in truth.
Let us not forget. Let us not falter.
Martin Zeilig is a Winnipeg writer and journalist.