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Brian Milakovsky lives in Bath. From 2015 to 2022 he lived in Siverskodonetsk, Ukraine, where he worked on economic recovery programs funded by the United States.
Just hours before Americans went to the polls on Nov. 3 to decide the character of our country, Russia made it blindingly clear what kind of country it is by butchering 55 civilians and first responders in a small town in eastern Ukraine.
Our new Congress should understand just what happened in Komyshuvakha, and what must be done.
Before the war the 5,000 residents of Komyshuvakha in the Zaporizhzhia region grew sunflowers and wheat, worked on the railroad or at the grain elevator and a few small factories. This is working class Ukraine, struggling but decent. Today, all but about 200 residents have fled, and on Nov. 2 Russian forces bombed the town’s humanitarian aid distribution center. First responders rushed residents into the basement bomb shelter, only for Russia to drop more bombs that collapsed the entire structure. Five days later, 55 bodies have been pulled from the rubble and dozens more people are unaccounted for.
As it always does, Russia immediately claimed that the hub was a legitimate military target. It flooded the internet with fakes to back up this ghoulish lie. But Ukraine released body cam footage from one of the fallen policemen, which showed only a panicked crowd of civilians rushing into the basement that would become their tomb.
There is nothing new or unexpected in any of Russia’s actions. Since my wife and I fled her hometown with our newborn baby in 2022, we have watched the cities and villages of eastern Ukraine become a geography of Russian atrocity: cluster bombing of cities and villages, imprisonment, torture and execution of loyal Ukrainians, indoctrination of their children. Popasna, Izium, Bakhmut, Mariinka, and Mariupol, jewel of the Azov Sea, surrounded now by mass graves.
Since 2022, Americans have watched Russia’s actions in places like Komyshuvakha and they have supported U.S. military aid to Ukraine. This fact seems to have kept President Donald Trump from forcing Ukraine into a deal that would leave it disarmed and exposed to Russia’s next invasion. But he has dialed back military aid to near zero, declined to impose crushing sanctions that Congress has authorized and legalized import of Russian diesel. His family and closest advisors socialize and talk business with Russian oligarchs and with Vladimir Putin’s slick team of negotiators.
But this new Congress can make a course correction, and every member of Maine’s delegation can contribute. In the lame duck session that stretches through the rest of 2026, Congress must pass the annual National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) and Sen. Angus King, a veteran member of the Armed Services Committee, can push for amendments to provide rocket interceptors, intelligence support and Starlink access to Ukraine’s army.
Once the new Congress is sworn in a priority should be amending the “Lindsay O. Graham Sanctioning Russia Act,” passed this year to narrow the president’s discretion on whether or not to impose them on Russia. Support for such amendments would be particularly meaningful from Rep.-elect Paul LePage, a longtime ally of the president. The representative’s counsel could help influence President Donald Trump’s thinking on the 2027 NDAA and the resumption of military aid packages to Ukraine.
Sen.-elect Troy Jackson, the first rank and file union member in the Senate, and Rep. Chellie Pingree, a member of the House Committee on Agriculture, can shape the restoration of humanitarian aid to the beleaguered Ukrainian people. They should focus on the real economy: the steelworkers, shipbuilders and dockworkers working under Russian bombardment and maritime blockade, the family farmers tilling mined fields and dodging murderous drones.
Supporting Ukraine with arms and financial assistance is not about prolonging the war. The path to a lasting peace is to build Ukraine’s arsenal of deterrence and make further aggression too costly for Russia to bear. Only then will we see the end of atrocities like the one at Komyshuvakha.