Letter: The West must stand up to Putin
This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2014, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
With Russian tanks in the Ukraine, let's just say it: Russia has invaded Ukraine, although Western political leaders prefer to call it aggression and escalation. Over the weekend, Russian President Vladimir Putin argued that "the Russian and Ukrainian peoples are practically one single people," no doubt a rhetorical step toward Russia annexing more of Ukraine.
I'm getting déjà vu: this sounds just like Hitler's Germany invading Austria and Czechoslovakia because the people there were German. The West waited too long to stand up to Hitler, and it seems that we are repeating the same mistake again with Putin.
Jeff Palmer
Salt Lake City