To the editor:

Some months ago, North Country residents gathered near Keene Valley to protest the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

An organizer of the event, Martha Swan, contemned that invasion in remarks to The Sun community newspaper (The Sun, March 13). She then added: “I certainly don’t think anyone was anticipating this grotesque (invasion).”

That’s not true, Ms. Swan. It’s not true at all. Many persons dreaded (even predicted) an occurrence like this unwanted invasion. They had two principal reasons for their concerns.

Firstly, they knew of the 16 years Vladimir Putin spent within Russia’s notorious KGB intelligence organization. It was work quite well suited to remarks he’d make later that the 1990 breakup of the Soviet Union was a historic catastrophe that had to be corrected.

Secondly, we saw that soon after attaining power Vladimir Putin brutally suppressed the republic of Chechnya. (This while George Bush presided in America.) Later, we saw him annex Crimea (while Barack Obama presided). Now we see him invading Ukraine (while Joe Biden presides).

Bush … Obama … Biden. Those were our presidents when Vladimir Putin acted aggressively. But we had a different president during years when Vladimir Putin was not aggressive. Donald Trump.

Vladimir Putin was very careful during the era of Donald Trump. He was shrewd but restrained. His most provocative act was the deployment of military personnel to help the brutal Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad attack resisting Syrian Democratic Forces.

Donald Trump did not like those attacks. In cooperation with Britain and France he thereby ordered missiles fired against Assad’s fighters and their Russian allies. Those strikes were effective, and in April 2018 we heard testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that several hundred Russians (along with many of Assad’s fighters) had been killed.

From that Vladimir Putin learned. He learned that liberties taken with other American presidents were not to be taken with Donald Trump.

Yet what Vladimir Putin learned went unlearnt by Americans who — in 2020 — thought the peace and prosperity they enjoyed under Donald Trump and Mike Pence would somehow continue under Joe Biden and Kamala Harris.

To any sane person that delusion is dead. But to dance on its grave is no kind of welcome for those we hear sobbing they “know better” now. Because now is too late for citizens dying in Ukraine, and for Americans crushed by the wretched economy of Biden and Harris.

So yes, it’s clear that persons like Ms. Swan are surprised and upset by the Russian invasion. But others feel worse, with a vexing exasperation. For if more Americans had wised to the folly of replacing Donald Trump and Mike Pence with Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, the double disasters of war in Ukraine and sky-high gas prices in America would never have occurred.

But they didn’t. So they did.

John Edelberg

Saranac Lake