(p. A19) WARSAW — Last week, a friend asked me what I could learn from a four-day trip to Ukraine I was planning that I couldn’t glean just by reading the news. It was a fair question. With the trip now behind me, I can answer.
. . .
I learned that, for all the aid we’ve given Ukraine, we are the true beneficiaries in the relationship, and they the true benefactors. Ben Wallace, Britain’s usually thoughtful defense minister, suggested after this month’s NATO summit that Ukrainians should show more gratitude to their arms suppliers. That gets the relationship backward. NATO countries are paying for their long-term security in money, which is cheap, and munitions, which are replaceable. Ukrainians are counting their costs in lives and limbs lost.
I am writing this column from Warsaw Chopin Airport. Parked outside the terminal are jetliners destined for Doha, Istanbul, Rome, Toronto, New York. The sight of them here could scarcely have been imagined 40 years ago. It came true because the Polish people remained, in Ronald Reagan’s apt words, “magnificently unreconciled to oppression.”
For the full commentary, see:
Bret Stephens. “What I Learned in Ukraine.” The New York Times (Monday, July 25, 2023): A19.
(Note: ellipsis added.)
(Note: the online version of the commentary has the date July 24, 2023, and has the same title as the print version.)