I wanted to make sure it reaches the president’s hands, so, I attached a check in support Ukraine’s war effort, that named president Zelenskyy, as a recipient of the check. To get the money, he had to cash it.

I asked Ukraine’s ambassador to the United States, Oksana Makarova, to forward my letter to President Zelenskyy.

The check was cashed on Dec. 27. 2023, but so far, no word from President Zelenskyy.

My column, “To light up Ukraine,” described the initiative of two College of William & Mary collegues Stewart Gamage, a former vice president for public affairs at the institution, and by William Walker, who served as director of university relations.

The birth of the “Light up Ukraine” has a fascinating background.

Gamage, helped organize the Presidential Precinct, one of the most successful public diplomacy organizations in the country, based at Charlottesville. It is a collaborative effort between the University of Virginia and the College of William & Mary and several historic sites.

While the Presidential Precinct hosted a group of young woman leaders from Ukraine, the subject of Russian propaganda effort to demoralize Ukrainians came up.

The women recalled the Russian message, “You will freeze to death in the dark. And no one will know, no one will care.”

Gamage asked them whether a solar-powered device that would light up a room or power a laptop computer would help. She presented the women with a sample, to take home to Ukraine and try it.

The answer soon come back: “They work, please send more.”

Since then, Gamage teaming up with Bill Walker, and Brock Bierman, the CEO of a nonprofit organization what was deeply involved in helping Ukraine, has sent thousands of devises to Ukraine.

Another of my Gazette columns that I wanted President Zelenskyy to read was about how the specter of Munich is haunting Ukraine.

During one of her visits to William & Mary I asked the late Madeleine Albright, the former U. S. Secretary of State, “What was your guiding principle while conducting U.S. foreign policy?”

“No more Munich,” she replied without hesitation.

In 1938, Neville Chamberlain, prime minister of Great Britain, and Edouard Daladier, prime minister of France, signed their “Peace in Our Time” pact with Adolf Hitler in Munich, giving him the green light to invade and dismember democratic Czechoslovakia.

Appeasement has become a synonym for concession to an aggressor that only invites further aggression. The dismemberment of Czechoslovakia was followed by World War II.

The specter of repeating the Munich pact hangs again over Ukraine. There is fear that the West, to end the war in Ukraine would appease Vladimir Putin by pushing Ukraine to make big territorial concession to Russia.

There is, however, hope that the West learned the lessons of Munich, and will remain the “arsenal of democracy” against tyrannical aggressors.

Two top U.S. officials, Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, in a widely reported recent news conference pledged US support to Ukraine in its war effort to reverse the Russian invasion.

“We want to see Russia weakened to a degree that it can’t do the kind of things that it has done in invading Ukraine, “Austin said. “It has already lost a lot of military capability. And a lot of its troops. And we want to see them not to have the capability to reproduce that capability very quickly.”

U.S Secretary of State Blinken, added, “Russian attempt to subjugate Ukraine and take away its independence has failed. We don’t know how the rest of this war will unfold, but we do know that sovereign independent Ukraine will be around a lot longer than Vladimir Putin on the scene.”

In Europe, it is Ukrainians who are dying to stop Russian aggression and expansionism. In the Middle East, it is Israelis who are dying to stop Iran and its surrogates from turning the region into a fanatical, anti-West, anti-American, stronghold.

I have always considered Americans to be very pragmatic people. I remain hopeful that the end of the day, our representatives in Congress, would act true to our tradition and keep America the “arsenal of democracy.”

(Frank Shatz is a former resident of Lake Placid and a current resident of Williamsburg, Virginia. He is the author of “Reports from a Distant Place,” a compilation of his columns. This column is used with permission by the Virginia Gazette.)