Dear Editor,
The letter from Mr. Mieczkowski (Canada’s tax dollars shouldn’t go to help fund foreign wars, March 6 Record) contains a number of obvious errors bordering on deception that call for a correction.
The financial support of Canada to Ukraine was not given “for the killing of Russians.”
As we are all aware, the support we gave Ukrainians is for their defence from the Russian aggression. The invading Russian soldiers are being killed because their authoritarian leader started the genocidal war against Ukraine by invading the neighbouring country. Putin’s ambitions of restoring the Russian empire are the prime reason for the war and the suffering of all the people involved.
While the Russian soldiers are dying at the front it is the Ukrainian civilians that are being indiscriminately killed by Russian bombs, missiles, drones in the Ukrainian towns and villages.
Not only that – those Ukrainians that can’t escape from the terrain occupied by Russians are suffering rape, robbery, torture, execution or relocation to Siberia. By Russian admission 700,000 Ukrainian children were taken from their country to Russia, separated from their families and subjected to forceful Russification.
This is genocide and not the first one by Russian doing. Mr. Mieczkowski may be aware of the extermination of about 22,000 Polish military officers and intelligentsia in the Katyn area by the Soviet secret police. The Russians are also responsible for the death from starvation of around 3.9 million Ukrainians during the Holodomor of 1932-33.
The Ukrainians need all the help we and others can give them for defence from Russian aggression and national survival.
Mr. Mieczkowski had his own reasons for choosing to live in Canada – now that he is “safe in the life-boat,” no hostile missiles are coming toward his home - he ought to show empathy to our human sisters and brothers that are not as fortunate.
We will not get impoverished by sharing some of our taxpayers’ money with the people who desperately need help.
Peter Subda,
Courtenay