With Russian invasion of Ukraine, a page just turned in Europe’s history book

In the future, we will remember Feb. 24 alongside 9/11 and Dec. 7. Although Russia’s invasion is not a bolt from the blue like Pearl Harbor or the attack on the World Trade Center, many people did not believe last week that Russia would actually invade Ukraine.

For the first time since the end of World War II, 77 years ago, one European state has attacked another European state. To keep Western powers at bay, President Vladimir Putin threatened nuclear war. He warned last week that anyone “who tries to stand in our way” will face “consequences you have never encountered in your history.”

Behind the nuclear threat is Putin’s massive investment over the last decade in conventional weapons. Similar to Germany in the 1930s, Russia rearmed while Europe slept.

During the early 2010s, when I was a reporter in Moscow, correspondents either ignored Russia’s military spending or wrote benign pieces about Russia’s upgrading its “rust bucket” military. One day in 2013, Russia’s Defense Ministry invited me to Kaliningrad, the Russian exclave between Poland and Lithuania. They wanted me, the Voice of America correspondent in Moscow, to see their shiny, new nuclear-capable Iskander missiles. From Washington, my editors replied: Don’t bother. Not a story.

Fast-forward to today. Russia has a million-man, modernized military. German’s land forces total 65,000. Between Germany and Russia stand Europe’s second- and third-largest armies: Ukraine with 200,000, and Poland with 160,000.

What should the U.S. do?

Burned by military defeats in Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan, Americans understandably are leery about getting lured into a land war in Eastern Europe.

But, Ukraine does not need or want American boots on the ground.

With Russia’s full bore — land, sea and air attack — Ukraine needs anti-drone, anti-air, anti-ship and anti-tank missiles. Lots of them. Now.

Looking at our laptops, electronic media are filled images of cars clogging highways west of Kyiv and Ukrainian refugees crossing the European Union border with Poland, Slovakia and Hungary. It is highly understandable that families want to get out of harm’s way.

My social media feeds are filled with appeals by friends looking for car rides for them and their children. Marina Morskaya writes: “Somebody is going out from Kyiv? There are two who needed to be picked up, they will pay of course. Thanks.”

But less visible are the tens of thousands of Ukrainians who are fighting and planning to fight — not dropping flower pots on Russian troops marching below. With Russian soldiers starting to enter Kyiv’s northern suburbs, Ukraine’s defense ministry is calling on residents to “make Molotov cocktails, neutralize the occupier.”

In coming days and weeks, the fighting will seesaw back and forth. Initial reports from the outskirts of Kyiv and Kharkiv, Ukraine’s two largest cities, show real resistance from Ukraine’s armed forces.

Ukraine’s military has three key advantages

They are defending their country.

They have eight years of experience fighting Russian-led forces in Ukraine’s southeast corner.

Their country is big. Ukraine is slightly larger than continental France. During World War II, after Germany defeated France in May-June 1940, Germany assigned 100,000 soldiers to control France.

In that light, the verbal part of Putin’s shock and awe tactics seem aimed at bullying Ukraine to quickly sue for peace. Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy seems unlikely to go for that. And even if he does, a large segment of Ukrainians will simply ignore a surrender order and continue military operations, partly as partisans, partly as organized military units.

For eight years, Ukrainians have watched the Russian-controlled portions of their country — Donetsk and Luhansk — descend into sullen places where gangster-style leaders control the population through censorship, rigged elections and torture camps.

Voting with their feet, about half of the populations have left. In six years of living in Ukraine, I never heard of anyone moving there.

Europe faces a new era

While a question mark hangs over Ukraine’s future, the West will have to come to grips with the fact that a page in Europe’s history book has turned. The days are gone when Europeans can enjoy their wonderful social benefits and look down their noses at American soldiers as rent-a-cops. A new generation learned last week that Kremlin promises are not worth the paper they are printed on.

Starting six months ago, Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov and Russia’s Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova assured the world again and again and again that Russia will not invade Ukraine.

A new generation of Europeans have learned that Russia is not a reliable energy supplier. Starting last summer, Putin pinched the gas pipe, refusing to fill Gazprom reservoirs in Europe. As a result, natural gas prices tripled.

The EU will have to reduce its current dependency on Russia for 40 percent of its imported natural gas. Investments will have to be made in LNG landing terminals, pipeline connectivity, wind and solar, and slowing nuclear phaseout.

On the strategic front, we have to recognize that the post-Cold War peace dividend is over.

With Belarus now integrated into Russia’s military apparatus, there are 30,000 Russian soldiers in Belarus. This weekend, they could flow south into Ukraine. Next month, they could flow north into Lithuania and Latvia, two Baltic democracies that are part of NATO and the EU.

President Joe Biden is making a smart move by airlifting U.S. troops into the Baltics. There, they will play the kind of tripwire role that has allowed South Korea to flourish over the last 70 years. North Korea knows that if it attacks Seoul, killing Americans in the process, it will bring down the wrath of the United States.