When the cowards come for you they will come with tanks, missiles and overwhelming force. They will jail or torture you for daring to speak the truth. They will shoot your neighbors from rooftops as you attempt to bury your dead. They will bomb and shell your homes into rubble, then sift through the twisted steel and crumbling concrete lest anyone come out alive.

At night, when you are all alone and waiting for the cowards to rain hellfire on your world, or break down your door, you will tremble as you’ve never trembled in your life. You will look at your frightened family and realize how fragile is the world and the dreams you were foolish enough to believe in. Any hope or plans you nurtured for your children’s future will be crushed like ants beneath the bloodstained boots of these cowardly murderers.

When the cowards break down your door and rudely snatch your sons from your arms you will fight like you’ve never fought before. You will struggle against all odds to keep them alive and free. You will struggle in vain to safeguard the only treasure worth defending with your dying breath.

When the cowards kill your children—your wives, husbands and brothers—you will feel more alone than you’ve ever felt before. And you will wonder how it could be that no one who witnessed the brutal killing spree had come to your defense. You will marvel how the possession of nuclear weapons turns humane and powerful nations into inconstant and powerless straw dogs. 

And in the darkness of your nights, you will question why your pleas to God and humanity fell on deaf ears. Why your plaintive cries for rescue were like embers from a fire that only rose to vanish into the darkening sky. 

When the cowards come for you they will come with tanks and overwhelming force. And they will kill with defiant impunity; raining down destruction in front of a world that can only stare in frozen disbelief. A world that sadly must learn once again that each death of a defenseless civilian not only strengthens the cowards but diminishes the cowardly onlookers.

Look not upon the victims of Ukraine, friends, lest you see yourselves. Then, all you have to do is sit silent and wait. 

Sooner or later the cowards will come for you.