Zelenskiy and his people are fighting for their lives to defend European values. They have earned the prospect of EU membership once this brutal war is over
For 77 years since 1945, people have compared this or that European figure to Adolf Hitler. For 77 years, this has been indefensible hyperbole. Even the genocidal war crimes in former Yugoslavia, although comparable in quality to the Nazis’, did not have the same scale or consequences. Now, when applied to Vladimir Putin, this seems for the first time an appropriate comparison – not yet to the Hitler of the Holocaust, but to the Hitler of 1939, invading Poland.
Every hour we see, as live video clips on our mobile phones, scenes from the second world war. The rubble of bombarded cities. Killed and orphaned children. The treks of refugees. All this is justified by a big lie that turns history on its head. An attack on a Jewish president of Ukraine, whose grandfather fought in the Red Army against Hitler, is described by Putin as “denazification”. So is a missile landing on the site of the Nazis’ 1941 Babyn Yar massacres. All the while, Ukrainians tell us on the radio, in fluent English, how they face death to defend their homeland, freedom and Europe. Yes, Europe, they keep saying that word.
