I suppose I should have said, right there in the guest column, “Reviving the USSR,” (Kennebunk Post, May 17, 2022), that Ukraine is a country and a people worth stealing, if that is how you see the world.

For hundreds of years Ukraine was known as the breadbasket of Russia, being somewhat further south, warmer and with good soil, growing grains, vegetables and some fruit along with livestock and poultry that is not possible in the cold, northern expanse of Russia.

Russia actually needs the foodstuffs that Ukraine has to offer. Russia could continue to buy their food from Ukraine, but perhaps it is just easier to take it, and claim it was always yours from the beginning. This is not an act of democracy, and wasn’t put to a vote in Russia. This is how bullies behave.

The area around the basin of the Don River, the Donbas, with iron ore, natural gas, crude oil and coal is very much like the strip of heavy industry from Pennsylvania, through Ohio, Michigan, northern Indiana and Illinois. Of course, Russia has its own area of heavy industry in the area around the Ural Mountains. And so, the Donbas is also a prize worth stealing if you are a thief. Just take it and say it was yours all along, but slipped away for a moment when you weren’t looking. Why not?

And the Crimea, too. Oh no, oops, forgot, they already did that one.

About the strength of the ties of nationality among the Slavic peoples, I think Putin overestimated that strength, but he also underestimated the strength, loyalty and love of their land that the Ukrainian people have had since Russia began behaving like the Texas of Europe, swaggering from Atlantic to Pacific with their satellites, rockets, hypersonic guided missiles and tactical nuclear six-guns swinging loose in its holsters.

I have spent many years working with Russian people, learning from them, teaching and supervising them, and have always found them to be nice and pleasant people, industrious, hard working, honest, fair, straight and moral. It has been their government, not the Russian people, but their leaders’ hunger and thirst for ever more power and control of the largest country in the world, a sixth of the land area of the globe and, therefore, a sixth of its natural resources that has been characterized as “Too much, and never enough.”

In a similar way, I have never understood why anyone would want to be president of the United States, possibly the richest and most powerful country ever. I notice that newly-elected presidents usually have their hair begin to turn grey during their first six months in office, (and I suspect their teeth start to loosen within the first year, too) if they are trying to be a good president and do good things for our country.

I no longer worry about aliens from other galaxies and other planets visiting earth. Beings intelligent enough to figure out how to travel billions of light years across the surface of space-time, will stop just overhead, take quick look at us and decide there is nothing for them to learn here, and will fly away quickly and never come back again.

Orrin Frink is a Kennebunkport resident. He earned a BA from Haverford College, 1954 Russian Area Studies; MA from Middlebury College Summer Intensive Russian Program, 1955; Ph.D. from Harvard University, 1961, Slavic Languages and Literatures. He can be reached at ofrink@gmail.com.

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