Why are the Russians targeting the civilian population in Ukraine? The answer is in Russian history. In the late 1930s and 1940s, the Russians were systematic in their efforts to depopulate indigenous people of satellite countries.

Approximately 30 to 40 percent of the population of the Baltic States speaks Russian. During World War II the Russians drafted the men of these countries into their army, and the women were moved into work camps. Russian civilians were relocated into their homes after these countries were stripped of the local population.

When the Russians chased the Germans out of Ukraine, the people of Sevastopol were loaded into boxcars and shipped off to Siberia. Thousands of these warm-weather people did not have the clothing or resistance to the viruses of this cold region. As many as 46 percent of them died either on the journey or in the first year of exile.

Today, the Russians, namely Vladimir Putin, are eliminating the people of Ukraine and will soon replace them with their own Russian-speaking people. This will make Ukraine a permanent state of the Soviet Union.

During the summit meeting of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, Prime Minister Winston Churchill and Josef Stalin at Yalta, in Crimea, Stalin moved the Russian border 200 miles into Poland, and Poland moved its border 200 miles into Germany. Keeping the Russians out of Europe has always been a problem.

Theodore Davis
Bath