

Our view: Putin's incursion felt in Green Bay

9:47 PM, Mar. 10, 2014  |  Comments
Local rally highlights pro-Ukraine support
Local rally highlights pro-Ukraine support: A group of Green Bay residents, some with strong Ukrainian ties, gathered in front of Titletown Brewing Company on Sunday to protest the actions of Russia and President Vladimir Putin. (March 9, 2014)
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About 20 people gathered on a brisk, windy, Sunday morning in downtown Green Bay to protest Russian President Vladimir Putin's incursion into the Crimean peninsula of Ukraine.

The crisis resonates with the Ukrainian-American community here. Svitlana Hereha of Green Bay is from Ukraine. She met her Ukrainian husband here, but her parents and other relatives are in Ukraine. She contacts them through Skype for several hours a day and keeps track of the developments as best she can.

It's "really hard to watch" what's happening in her country, she said. On Sunday she held a sign that read: "This is Putin's war on Ukraine, not Russia's war," highlighting a poll shows 73 percent of Russians oppose Putin's actions.

Putin's decision to order forces into Crimea is a big deal for her and other ethnic and first-generation Ukrainians. It's also a big deal for the United States, which signed a pact 20 years ago to guarantee Ukraine's borders in exchange for nuclear disarmament.

In 1994, the U.S., the United Kingdom and Russia signed the Budapest Memorandums on Security Assurances in which Ukraine gave up its nuclear weapons stockpile, amassed courtesy of the dissolution of the Soviet Union and believed to be the third largest in the world.

In exchange, those three countries promised to protect, and not to attack, Ukraine. The agreement reads, in part, that if Ukraine eliminates its nuclear weapons, these countries will "respect the independence and sovereignty and the existing borders of Ukraine" and that they will "refrain from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of Ukraine."

In other words, we told the Ukraine that they don't need nuclear weapons because we'll have your back. It's a promise that Putin forgot or has no intention of honoring.

The U.S. and Great Britain should honor that agreement and work with other European countries, like Germany and Poland, to pressure Putin.

"The credibility of the United States is on the line right now. What country in the world is going to sign a pact with the U.S. to give up weapons if this one is not honored?" said Olga Halaburda of De Pere, a first-generation Ukrainian who many people may remember from her days at WFRV, Channel 5, and as owner of Ukrainian Power Videos, educational children's videos.

Halaburda, who organized Sunday's rally, makes an excellent point. We need President Barack Obama to follow through on the tough sanctions he has called for and to work with other European countries to protect the sovereignty of Ukraine and pressure Putin to pull back.

You don't have to be Ukrainian to appreciate the struggle to remain free from an oppressor. What's happening 5,000 miles away from us should resonate with anyone who opposes a repressive government that's willing to crack down on peaceful protests and kill more than 70 people and injure hundreds more, a government that's missing $30 billion from its accounts, a president who furnishes a lavish, $75 million presidential mansion while his country goes bankrupt.

Future negotiations with other countries will be influenced based on how the U.S. responds to this crisis and to the promises it made 20 years ago.

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