LETTER TO EDITOR: Russia's move

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"Appeasement" is a much-overused word in political commentary. It refers to the events of 1938, when Hitler used the supposed oppression of the German minority in Czechoslovakia's Sudetenland to invade a sovereign state, and the world let him get away with it. Nazi Germany went on to take the rest of Czechoslovakia, then Poland, and then most of Europe.

Today, Russia cites the "protection" of freshly minted Russian citizens in Georgia's South Ossetia as the pretext for a violation of Georgian sovereignty ("Georgia: In 'state of war' over South Ossetia," World, Saturday, e-edition). The so-called "volunteers" pouring in from Russia to aid Russian "peacekeepers," and the claim that it is all Georgia's fault, are sickeningly familiar.

If the West appeases Russia today, tomorrow Russia may take the rest of Georgia, then move on to other sovereign states against which it has similarly invented claims, first of all Ukraine and Moldova.

ANDREW SOROKOWSKI

Rockville