To the editor:

Ukraine is being devastated and its people slaughtered for trying to preserve a national identity separate from Russia and to continue building a fledgling democracy.

On Feb. 24, a Russian military force 100,000 strong began invading Ukraine and bombarding its cities. Ukraine’s defenses were thought to be inferior — and doomed.

Surprisingly, amid widespread destruction, the Ukrainian military is holding its own, even destroying and driving back Russian invaders, considered superior before being dispatched across their borders by a sick, megalomaniac dictator in Moscow.

We Americans present a mirror image of what is happening in the East Slavic world (Ukraine, Russia, Belarus).

Although citizens of a venerable democracy, we Americans are under attack from within by a three-pronged authoritarian, anti-democratic insurgency.

This virtual pandemic is caused by an orange, spiked, rotund virus, and is disseminated by unhinged or timid congressmen and women, reactionary governors and supermajorities in state legislatures, and ill-willed U.S. Supreme Court justices.

They are touted by the mendacious branch of the media world and buttressed by hostile, extra-legal formations, some of them armed.

Let’s try to emulate those brave Ukrainians who want their country to take its rightful place among civilized, peaceful, generous and cooperative nations.

Let’s use every means possible, shy of taking up arms (we have the National Guard and police forces to maintain public order), and fight for the continued evolution of the United States as one of the most forward-looking, open-minded, fair and welcoming nations on earth.

Gerald E. Mikkelson,

Lawrence