It is extremely hard to watch the nightmare images and stories filling our TVs as Ukraine experiences the full might and terror that modern war machines can unleash.
In recent times, we have watched similar realities from afar – in Syria, Afghanistan, Yemen, and Iraq. But this time, it is almost on our own doorstep, too close for the same level of comfort and distancing. This time, it is being led by one of the West’s "favourite" despots, the "evil genius" Vladimir Putin, his cronies and flunkies and their international network of support.
In the first instance, this is an unprovoked and inhuman war of aggression on Ukraine as a country and on Ukrainians as a people. As is obvious from the determined and perceptive comments of a great many Ukrainians and their leadership, it is simultaneously a war on fundamental values and practices.
The ferocity of the attack and its dishonest justification is testament to the fact that Putin’s regime cannot abide the very existence of Ukraine because it holds a mirror up to Russian society. Putin and his allies cannot allow this.
While the main text is Ukraine, the subtext is Russia. While the main text is freedom and democracy, the subtext is demagoguery and despotism. In this sense, the war on Ukraine amounts to a declaration of war on what most of us hold dear but sadly routinely take for granted.
How each of us respond to the immediate and urgent needs of Ukrainians is a personal moral and practical challenge.
The war on Ukraine holds a mirror up to each of us demanding that we reflect on what terms like democracy, respect, dignity, and tolerance (and crucially their opposites) mean for us
How we respond in the broader context and in the longer term is also of key importance. The war on Ukraine holds a mirror up to each of us demanding that we reflect on what terms like democracy, respect, dignity, and tolerance (and crucially their opposites) mean for us.
Are they merely theoretical ideas for constitutions, conferences or rarefied conversations or are they guides for everyday life? What are we prepared to do to promote and defend them not just in extreme situations but also in the everyday and the mundane?
Accordingly, while the vicious frontline of this war is in Ukraine (and in the states immediately bordering it), it is also directly relevant on the "home front". As has become glaringly obvious, this is not just Ukraine’s war, it is also ours.
The echoes of the issues at stake can be seen in the US, the UK, France, Germany and in a great many other states including those closest to me – Ireland and Malta.
They are to be seen most visibly in debates about militarism (and neutrality), financial structures and "services", energy sources and costs, trade and, of course in attitudes to the wealth, influence and behaviour of oligarchs (including the infamous flogging of passports, and not just by Malta).
They will also be seen and tested in the coming weeks, months and possibly years in our attitudes and behaviours to refugees (will Malta be, once again, "full"?). When we are rightly shocked by the indignities and inhumanities meted out to Ukrainian families and their children, are we equally shocked and moved by similar inhumanities closer to home?
But they will also be seen and tested in our general attitudes to ongoing attacks on democracy and the rule of law (in the UK, US, Malta and elsewhere); in our acceptance and even praise of our own European and locally grown demagogues and in our attitudes to corruption, especially that in the financial sector.
It will also be seen in the degree to which we prepared to step back from adding to the world’s sum of prejudice, bigotry, demagoguery, and intolerance and instead contribute to the strengthening of those values Ukrainians (and others worldwide) are currently fighting (and dying) to defend?
As we join in the movement to support and defend Ukraine against Putin’s aggression (and that of his apologists), it's also time to look again in the mirror.