Some in Washington say they want Ukraine’s plan for “victory” before sending the brave Ukrainians any more aid.

It is fortunate that our own Robert H. Jackson, as President Roosevelt’s Attorney General in 1940, did not tell Winston Churchill that Attorney General Jackson would not approve lending old U.S. ships to Britain in exchange for our leasing British bases in the Western Hemisphere (Lend-Lease), until Churchill produced a plan for “victory” over Nazi Germany.

In 1940 Britain had no plan for “victory” over the Nazi Germans. Britain was absolutely desperate for some help from the United States just so Britain could avoid a Nazi invasion and total defeat.

Is it not already a huge victory that Russia’s invasion of an independent and democratic Ukraine has been largely repulsed for almost two years? A nation of 130,000,000 has invaded a nation of 40,000,000, and yet the people of Ukraine fight and die to remain an independent, democratic nation.

It appears that many military experts in NATO and in the Pentagon in February 2022 believed Putin’s Russian military would take over Ukraine in less than two weeks. Some Western leaders were planning a Ukrainian government in exile somewhere, and assumed the best the Ukrainians could do was harass the occupying Russian “Bear” with guerilla warfare.

The bravery of the Ukrainian President Zelensky, and the bravery, skill and determination of the Ukrainian people and armed forces to defend their homeland against the Russian “Super Power” has been stunning.

President Zelensky did not flee his country’s capital, Kiev, in the face of the Russian invasion. Instead, in Churchill-like fashion, he said, “I don’t need a ride, I need ammunition.”

The cost to Russia of this war of aggression has been horrendous.

Recent American intelligence estimates that since the start of the invasion of Ukraine in February, 2022, 315,000 Russians are dead or injured, or nearly 90% of the personnel Russia had when the conflict began.

It would appear that Ukraine has already been “victorious”, inflicting 315,000 casualties on the Russian military. To cope with these horrific losses, Putin has even recruited replacements out of Russian prisons.

To put Russia’s 315,000 casualties into perspective, the population of Buffalo, New York is only 276,000.

It would be a grave threat to the United States and all of Europe if the United States lost its will to support Ukraine with all of the equipment, weapons and ammunitions that the Ukrainians need.

It appears Western Europeans are convinced that if Putin succeeds in eliminating an independent Ukraine, that he would move on to take control of many more countries. Putin is determined to re-create a Russian Empire.

Ukraine asks the United States and other Western countries only for the weapons and ammunitions to defend itself.

Ukraine has not asked for a single soldier from America, Germany, Canada, Poland, France, Great Britain or any other country to fight for Ukraine’s continued existence as a free, democratic nation.

As to the cost of continued American military assistance to Ukraine, the truth is most of our country’s monetary aid to Ukraine is being spent on producing military airplanes, weapons, and ammunition here at home, creating American jobs.

Especially here in Chautauqua County, the home of the Chief Prosecutor of the Nazis at Nuremberg, Robert H. Jackson, we must not accept Putin’s illegal aggressive war. Jackson established for all time that an unprovoked war against another nation is a “war of aggression” which is a “crime against peace.”

We must not allow Putin’s naked and illegal aggression against Ukraine to succeed simply because America lacks the will to avoid repeating the lesson of the Western world’s appeasement that gave us World War II.

Fred Larson is a graduate of Princeton University’s Woodrow Wilson School of Public & International Affairs, the Yale Law School and is a retired Jamestown City Court judge. He now serves on the Chautauqua County Legislature.