By: Arian Sajovic
Early Thursday morning, Russian military forces launched military operations that sparked a war in Ukraine. Moreover, the completely ruthless violation of international law and norms, which managed to establish a long peace, received only a lukewarm response from the West.
People are dying, suffering, missing their loved ones, but there is no serious response. Despite all the words of support and classic prayers and thoughts sent to the brave people of Ukraine, we have not seen any serious actions. On the first day, we heard how we expected the Russian invasion in the West, and we established and prepared plans for the implementation of appropriate sanctions, but we clearly failed to reach a collective agreement on the latter. Hour by hour, we receive new reports of how one or the other is blocking the most basic possible response to the violent conflict that was ignited by Russia. The Russians are already in front of Kiev, but we are thinking about rubbles that could be used for European luxury products and we are troubling our heads with energy prices. Of course, no one wants more violence, and military intervention is not a joke, but a firm, unanimous response is necessary if we want to stop unnecessary bloodshed by Kremlin.
In the end, the West concluded that we would “hit” them with economic sanctions and ban them from performing at Eurovision. Oh, and Čeferin took away the Champions League final from them. Clearly, the appropriate response to violence is to ban entertainment and take away pocket money. Even with this we are not all unanimous. And considering that young people are brought up in a similar way today, it is not surprising that we are where we are.
Arian Sajovic is a graduate defence scientist and journalist.