A little over two years ago, in the dead of a quiet night in late February 2022, pretty much every journalist in Ukraine was wide awake.
We were staring into our laptops in the dark. Updating news feeds every other minute. Looking at U.S. Air Force RQ-4 Global Hawk surveillance aircraft wiggling over Ukraine and scanning the border with Belarus north of Kyiv and the Donbas front in the east.
Yours truly was quietly sipping whiskey in the gloom of his poor rented apartment in northwest Kyiv.
We knew the day of all days was coming. And then, the face of Vladimir Putin of Russia twisted with sadistic glee in anticipation of the coming triumph going live on TV screens. “I have made a decision to carry out a special military operation,” he said. “And whoever stands in our way must know that Russia’s reaction will be immediate, and bring down upon them consequences never seen before in your history.”
The rolling thunder of missiles was soon heard from all quarters of the Ukrainian capital. TV channels broadcast live video of gigantic plumes of fire over Ukrainian cities. And endless convoys of trucks and armored vehicles marked Z and V breaking through along most of the Ukrainian border. The unthinkable—the most catastrophic European war of aggression since Adolf Hitler—had begun.
I often go back to those early days of the Battle of Kyiv. Even more so this week amid a showdown in the U.S. Congress over $60 billion in military aid to my country.
Bach in February 2022, we were all alone. What little Western military materiel we possessed had been sent to us via an air bridge from the free world in the final weeks, or even just days, before the invasion. It was supposed to be our nation’s doomsday.
Yet no words can do justice to the unbelievable spiritual uprising of those days. So many men and…
