Supporting Ukraine – one book at a time
Words Take Flight Books is proud to support United Help Ukraine, a nonprofit organization that’s providing medical aid and humanitarian relief to the war-ravaged nation. For the month of April, we will donate all sales of Michael Maryk’s Sunpath to help the people of Ukraine fighting for their lives and freedom.
But why Sunpath?
Because in war, the greatest victims are almost always the smallest – whether it’s Vladimir Putin’s war of personal vendetta, delusions of empire and ego satisfaction against Ukraine, or Russia’s seemingly endless invasions of Finland in the 1930s and 40s that formed the basis for Sunpath.
Today, over half – 4.3 million – of Ukraine’s estimated 7.5 million children have been displaced. Some have escaped to neighboring countries. Others have been chased out of their homes by bombs and bullets – trapped in their own nation, lacking proper food, shelter, medicine and more. The Ukrainian prosecutor’s office has indicated that 121 children have already been killed.
Many more children will lose their homes and lives before this war is over – a war that UNICEF Executive Director Catherine Russell noted, “…has caused one of the fastest largescale displacements of children since World War II.”
But, as is always the case, history repeats itself – especially when war and Russia are involved.
In World War II, Russia’s ongoing military assaults on Finland left many of the nation’s children without parents or homes, or with sick parents or those who worked in the war effort and were unable to care for them. The Finnish government made the difficult decision to send these children – estimates range from 80,000-100,000 – to neutral countries for their safety. Most were sent to Sweden, where they were collectively given the name the Finska Krigsbarn, or Finnish War Children, while others were sent to Denmark and Norway.
Those children carried and, as adults, still carry the scars of their experiences – the same scars that Putin’s young Ukrainian victims will bear for the rest of their lives.
The nations of the world that still have a conscience are exercising the same by imposing crippling sanctions on Russia and providing whatever aid they can to the brave people of Ukraine fighting for their right to exist as an independent, self-determining nation. It’s all that can be done short of direct military engagement and giving the Madman of Moscow a reason to play the last move in what seems to be his entitled- and enraged-child endgame of global annihilation: “If I can’t have all the toys, then I’ll just smash them so that no one else can have them.”
From Bucha to Kherson, from Kharkiv to Kyiv, the streets are littered with the bodies of innocent, murdered Ukrainians – and the torn, bloodied clothing of women who have been beaten and raped. Russian soldiers are sending home “care packages” of looted “spoils of war.”
You and I can’t be there to fight alongside the people of Ukraine – but we can be there with our support to help shelter, clothe, feed and provide them with medical aid. We can give them what they need to prevent Putin – and his perverse, poisonous proxies doing his bidding – from getting what he wants: The subjugation of Ukraine at best and the destruction of the world at worst.
Most of all, let’s ensure that the children of Ukraine have all that they need to survive this war – and thrive thereafter.
They are Ukraine’s – and the world’s – future.
SOURCES:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/03/24/ukraine-children-displacement/
https://www.reuters.com/world/ukraine-prosecutors-office-says-121-children-killed-war-2022-03-23/
