What Would Elvis Do? - March 20th 2025

March 20th 2025

Yuriy discusses the Western world's misguided approach to negotiating with Putin and the catastrophic implications for Ukraine and global democracy. He questions, 'What would Elvis do?' in the face of such evil, invoking the spirit of past heroes who stood against oppression.

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TRANSCRIPT: (Apple Podcasts & Podbean app users can enjoy accurate closed captions)  

It is March 20. 

It has become physically painful for me to read news because time and time again I see attempts to normalize evil. I watch as the Western world tries to speak with Putin- the very man who kills and terrorize Ukrainians every single day, who has ordered the abduction of thousands and under whose command Ukrainian prisoners are tortured and executed- as if he were a regular politician, the normal president of a normal country. No one demands that he stop the torture, the suffering. Instead, we ask him: what would you like in exchange for stopping your terror?  What can we offer you? So that you will stop killing children every day? And of course, whatever is offered will come at the expense of Ukrainians. 

I know that by saying this, I will lose some American listeners, some will follow Vice President Vance's lead and start shouting that Ukrainians should be grateful for past support and keep quiet when the big wise men in the White House decides what to do with us. But I have to say this, negotiating hockey games with Putin, pressuring Ukraine to give up its occupied territories, these are not peace initiatives. These are the normalization of evil and an attempt to force us into surrender. We are being asked to abandon our occupied lands. And that means abandoning the people who live there. They will continue to be persecuted, tortured, murdered, their  children taken, and turned into Russians, the war will not end. It will simply take another form and only for a time. Given a break in fighting, Russia will seize the opportunity to regroup, correct its mistakes, amass strength, and buy a few more immoral American reporters to spread its propaganda in the West. And then they will return. 

Don't think we only want war ruined cities they have bombed and occupied. They still want to completely erase Ukraine as a state, to either turn Ukrainians into Russians or to kill us. This is an imperial project, a campaign to destroy everything democratic and progressive, to turn it into a swamp and absorb it.  It has always been this way. And the American governments used to understand that in the past. Why did US troops remain in Europe after defeating Nazism? Because Russia was no less of an aggressive threat. When Nazi Germany.  What was Elvis doing in Europe during his military service? He was part of a force that stood ready to fight back if Russia attempted to invade the West.  

Many in the West still don't fully grasp the future of this war. They think it is simply Russia attacking Ukraine. But what is not quite true. This is Russia's attack on the free world, Ukraine is just the first victim and trying to negotiate with murders, bribing them with Ukrainian land, is a betrayal of ideals of democracy. It is a betrayal of a memory of those who fought past wars on the side of good against evil. What would was millions of heroes of the past do if they saw what is happening now? 

What would Elvis do? Whose side would he be on?