“Every few weeks,” wrote one of our more interesting critics, Walt Zlotow, on his Substack last spring, “the Chicago Tribune Editorial Board publishes an editorial misrepresenting the war in Ukraine.”

Zlotow’s complaints included this statement in an editorial, also published last April: “We have never wavered in our support for the Ukrainian people against Russian aggression, stretching back to the beginning of Putin’s brutal, illegal war. We’ve never heard any reasonable argument to the contrary.”

In that piece, we lauded Mike Johnson, the Republican speaker of the House, for potentially risking his job by pushing continued Ukraine aid over the objections of Republican “firebrands.”

At the time, Ukraine Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal was in Chicago to (among other things) lobby Gov. JB Pritzker and his sister, former special U.S. representative to Ukraine, Penny Pritzker, to “press his nation’s case.”

Zlotow disagreed, writing: “It’s the Trib Editorial Board Members that wear the moniker ‘firebrands’ for engaging in radical promotion of endless war destroying Ukraine.”

Since the election of Donald J. Trump, a president with far too cozy a relationship with Russian President Vladimir Putin, Zlotow’s views have become more common, especially in MAGA circles. Zlotow makes the ascendent point of view better than most: “(The Tribune editorial board) knows the war is hopeless. It knows that continued war will simply kill hundreds of thousands more Ukrainian soldiers. It knows negotiations are the only way this war will end.”

Well, it’s been more than a few weeks and we are back again, in a city that has quietly welcomed thousands of Ukrainian refugees, to reaffirm the statement of our never wavering support for the people of Ukraine.

And, for that matter, for the people of the Republic of Georgia, who have been watching the war in Ukraine with growing horror, realizing that their own fledgling democracy is yet more vulnerable to the same force, to the same man with a friend now back in one of the world’s highest places, if not the highest.

Yes, we know that war extracts a terrible price. We don’t view Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy as some kind of saint, nor do we doubt for a moment that some of the money America sent to defend Ukraine has been wasted or siphoned away by bad actors. It was ever thus. And Zlotow is right when he says that negotiations will be necessary to end the war, just as has been the case with most any war humans have ever fought.

We’re glad Secretary of State Marco Rubio and others are engaging in that process and we’re even open to the notion that whatever special relationship Trump claims to have with Putin might be helpful in weaning him away from China and back more into a place where his name does not strike fear and loathing into so many. All true.

But let’s not engage in some Orwellian rewriting of history to do so. And let’s not forget that if tyrants are allowed to send tanks rolling across borders not their own without invitation and with expansionist ambitions, the world must rise up in support of their quarry, lest said tyrants decide a few more borders could also fall with the right kind of violent coaxing. The MAGA crowd are very conscious of the movements of unauthorized migrants; why must they be so enabling of Putin’s far more dangerous excursions? It defies logic.

So when the U.S. voted with Russia against a United Nations General Assembly resolution Monday that was criticizing Russia for its aggression against Ukraine of three years ago, we say “for shame.” All peace-loving people should want an end to this war, and the realities of Realpolitik means that will come with a price we will have to swallow, but it’s a bridge way too far for the U.S. to formally balk at the notion that Putin started this war.

So let’s be clear. Again.

Russia invaded a sovereign nation. Period. Any zeal to end the war must not compromise a fair and full acknowledgment of how this particular war began. If this was a tactical appeasement decision on the part of Trump, Rubio or anyone else, and there can be no other explanation not too terrible to contemplate, it was both a dangerous and a morally bankrupt one.

All Americans with actual, functioning memories know that. So do the Ukrainian and Russian people. And so do we.

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