Today’s Lesson: A Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing

Today, two leaders converge in a shared name and diverge in their political genius. Vladimir Putin, the heir of an ancient Russian civilization and its eastern values, is matched up against Volodymyr Zelenskyy, the president of Ukraine, which is facing an unparalleled fiasco. There is no comparison between these two men. Putin is still in power after two decades, emerging from a singular imperial history through which he sought to empower and focus the strength of the Russian Federation as an inalienable legacy. Putin thinks, assesses, decides and finally acts based on his own interests as a president who fights against the liberal West without asking for any protection. As for Zelenskyy, he has swallowed the American and European poison. Today, after relying on the West, Zelenskyy finds himself abandoned as Putin devours his country.

This is what will happen to anyone who puts their trust in the American government or its followers in Europe. They will abandon him at the first juncture and leave him to his inevitable fate. Even after years of political support, protocol visits to Kyiv and inciting the leaders of Ukraine to resist Moscow, the moment of truth has finally come. Now, when Ukraine is hours away from falling under Russian control, Zelenskyy is going outside with members of his government to make videos on his phone. Here we are, after all the thunderous talk from U.S. President Joe Biden and, behind him, the leaders of Europe, still nothing has trickled down to protect Kyiv and its leader, even though they had an opportunity to punish Putin as he rode toward Ukraine.

The “Wild West” abandoned their so-called ally to Putin, with their mouthpieces saying, “He is a wolf in sheep’s clothing.” We will see where this issue ends. Meanwhile, the Ukrainian people are the only ones who will be affected by sanctions, displacement, killing, segmentation of their country’s lands and dangerous facilities such as the famous Chernobyl nuclear plant, and the destruction of their infrastructure and military power. In the coming period, it is even possible that their leadership might be replaced with a leader entirely loyal to Moscow. Kyiv will become a Russian village and NATO will do nothing. All of Eastern Europe will be terrified by the specter of the Soviet Union. This is all the result of blind trust in the pragmatic and deceitful West. The West does not care about protecting any ruler anywhere across the globe, except for Israel and Western interests.

Back when I was in school, it took me many long days to understand the Crimea issue well enough to close my political history book. Over the years, we have forgotten the lesson we had once learned. But later, we understood the importance of Crimea and how brutal wars were fought between the Ottoman and Russian czarist empires, with the latter viewing Ottoman rule as threatening its Orthodox heritage. The czarist empire was insistent upon expanding toward historic Palestine so that Arab churches there would be subjected to imperial orthodoxy, under the pretext of protecting Arab Christians who were native to the region.

But czarist Russia turned to fight the Ottoman Empire in wars that Moscow lost. The Ottomans faced czarist Russia and defended Crimea and all the peoples there under its dominion, including the Tatars, Muslims from the Caucasus and Christians from Europe. Then, the Ottomans were joined by Britain, France, Egypt, Tunisia and the Kingdom of Sardinia, which later became the Kingdom of Italy. The war continued for three years and finally ended in 1856, with Russia’s surrender after the siege of Sevastopol and the signing of the Treaty of Paris.

Today, history is repeating itself in another way, with ideological eastern alliances that do not allow for surrender facing off against softer western alliances that run their battles through politics rather than military might. Kyiv will not be the same as Stalingrad, where Hitler’s army was defeated in 1945. The whole of Eastern Europe was conquered by the Red Army and declared to be part of the Soviet Union. Russia is not an Arab country that NATO forces would enter in order to destroy, like Iraq, Libya, Syria, Yemen, Somalia, Mali and wherever else it likes. Even Iran no longer fears the West and negotiates with it, fighting down to the letter.

The Arab world must understand this final lesson. There is a difference between knowing something and understanding what you know. These quixotic wars must end because they drain the state of its resources and return its peoples to dark periods of starvation. Millions of people have been displaced in parts of the Western world and its neighboring countries. The clearest example of stubbornness is the Ukrainian leadership, which believed that the West would defend it and refused to believe its neighbors, who had long been skeptical. Ukraine’s leadership knows that its people do not love the West, but rather love its history and love those who might lead them toward prosperity, confidence and building a future in which generations to come will have a place in the world that they can be proud of.