Friend,

Many of us are watching the Russian invasion of Ukraine in horror this week. I feel that too, as I was in Ukraine in 2017, and I will never forget my visit to the city of Dnipro. You can watch my memories from the trip.

I met incredible and brave people, from military leaders who were dealing even then with violent Russian aggression and incursions in their country to everyday people from all sorts of backgrounds.

But no meeting moved me more than my meeting with Mayor Filatov, the mayor of the great city of Dnipro. It was a wonderful meeting, and I remember how struck I was by all the American iconography in his office, present everywhere. I realized that our nation to him was a symbol of democratic ideals — freedom, liberty, and self-determination.

As a former mayor myself, we found we had a lot in common and talked about the big city challenges we both had to deal with. But over and over again, we kept returning to the threat that Russia posed — he even predicted that there would be an invasion. Despite the looming threat, he had this fierce, gritty belief that his nation would be free, and that democracy would prevail.

I will tell you that democracy in and of itself is defiantly optimistic. It is hope triumphing over adversity. It is the best of human nature winning out over the worst of human nature. And tyrants know that democracy and democratic ideals are a threat to them. Putin knows that. Democracy is dangerous to the oppressor. It is dangerous to oppression. And so we the freedom loving people must understand that what is going on in Ukraine is a threat to democracy, to the rule of law. It is a threat to peace.

This violence is a moral obscenity.

And we must now stand with the people of Ukraine by joining together in historic sanctions to put real consequences on Putin’s aggression. We must do what we can to resurrect diplomacy and peace from this violent conflict. And as I watched the city I visited being bombed and shelled this week, I ask us all to understand that there are people right now in Ukraine dying for their dream of democracy. Please let us keep them in our hearts.

Let us pray for them, and let us pray for peace.

With love and gratitude,

Cory