Opinion | Give Ukraine the help it needs

Without the huge commitment by the United Nations forces in the Korean War, South Korea would be part of North Korea today.

Democracy is again being tested, this time in Ukraine. Without effective, full-throated help from the West, Ukraine is likely to be absorbed into a totalitarian Russia. Let’s learn the lessons of history and give Ukraine all the help it requests and desperately needs to win the war.

E. David Luria, Washington

Regarding the April 11 front-page article “In Kyiv stands an ex-boxer, and a mayor by his trade”:

What we are witnessing in Ukraine is something extraordinary in today’s world: a selfless, principled, unorthodox, daring style of leadership we’ve seldom, if ever, seen in our own political leaders.

The examples set by Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky, an actor turned politician, and Vitali Klitschko, a former boxer now the mayor of Kyiv, and others should twist the necks of every American politician in the direction of true service to their people, regardless of how harrowing the circumstances.

Mr. Zelensky and Mr. Klitschko aren’t being dictated to by polls or their party’s base, or crazy conspiracy theories. Instead, they are dedicated — to the point of risking their own lives — to defending democracy, not only for Ukrainians, but seemingly for the rest of the free world, as well.

That used to be the U.S. goal: freedom for all. Instead we now seem intent on debasing and ultimately destroying the democracy others are so willingly and valiantly giving their lives for.

Larry Checco, Silver Spring