I live in Guilderland. Every day since the coronavirus hit town, Guilderland’s supervisor, Peter Barber, has sent out an advisory message in an email to residents.

Each day for nearly two years he has reported the latest numbers — of infections, of hospitalizations, of deaths — from press releases issued by the county and state. This is useful information, keeping citizens informed of a peril in their midst.

Barber always ends his missive with the same words: Thank you for staying safe and calm.

The president of Ukraine spoke similar words to his people as the Russian army was set to attack his country. He told them to stay home, to stay safe and calm.

We thought, when we heard those words, how different the crises were. The pandemic is a naturally caused calamity, enveloping the world.

Governments, including our own, have largely responded responsibly. Scientists around the globe are sharing their research as understanding of the disease evolves along with the virus and treatments emerge.

Sure, there have been some missteps. And the suffering caused by widespread illness and millions of deaths cannot be minimized.

But each of us here were given things we could do to make a difference, to help stem the misery. During the worst of it, we could stay isolated. We could wear masks to protect others and ourselves. Once a vaccine became available, we could protect ourselves and stop the spread by getting vaccinated.

Now we watch from a distance as Vladimer Putin has the Russian army attack Ukraine. We wondered, as we read Zelensky’s words, how it would feel to be living in Ukraine. We knew, even if we stayed in our home, we would not feel safe, we would not be calm.

Living here, in Guilderland, in the United States of America, we feel simply helpless, watching from afar as the war unfolds. 

On Thursday, we listened to the video The New York Times had posted of the United Nations Security Council emergency meeting where the Ukrainian ambassador said to the Russian ambassador, “The Russian president declared the war …. It is the responsibility of this body to stop the war.”

Through a translator, the Russian ambassador responded, “This isn’t called a war. This is called a military operation ….”

“There is no purgatory for war criminals,” answered the Ukrainian ambassador. “They go straight to hell, Ambassador.”

We watched the video, too, of the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelensky, talking in Russian to the Russian people, “They told you that Ukraine is posing a threat to Russia,” he said, stating that is not the case.

Then we watched the videos of the bombs exploding and saw the Times map with red marks across Ukraine that had been targeted.

We next watched the video of Zelensky, this time speaking in Ukrainian, reporting to his people in the early morning hours on Friday the casualties so far. “They’re killing people and turning peaceful cities into military targets,” he said, dispelling rumors that he and his family had fled.

“I remain in the capital. My family is also in Ukraine. My children are in Ukraine,” he said. “My family are not traitors; they are citizens of Ukraine.

Zelensky went on, “The enemy has marked me as target number one, my family as target number two. They want to damage Ukraine politically by destroying the head of state.”

Then on Friday, as we are writing this, came the pictures of the dead and wounded, of the cars fleeing Kyiv, of the citizens — some of them young girls — armed with guns.

“We are left to our own devices in defense of our state,” Zelensky had said. “Who is ready to fight together with us? Honestly, I do not see such.”

We believe President Joe Biden with the North Atlantic Treaty Organization is charting the right course, using sanctions. American soldiers were finally just extricated from a 20-year war and Americans are not eager for another.

But the United States and Europe must be willing to take still tougher sanctions — sanctions that may well hurt at home; gas prices, for instance, will likely rise. That is a small price for us to pay as another country, a sovereign state, is being invaded.

We can send humanitarian aid to Ukraine and accept refugees. But this is cold comfort as we watch, in real time, Russia’s unprovoked attack on another country.

Our former governor, Andrew Cuomo, frequently used war terminology as New York State “battled” COVID-19. The vaccine, he often said, was “the weapon that will win the war.”

What is happening in Ukraine is real war. It is painful to witness and yet stand idly aside.

Searching for perspective, we spoke to Ryan Irwin, who teaches history at the University at Albany and has written books on our world order. When we talked to him Friday, he had just taught a class on the German invasion of Ukraine in the 1940s.

“The line between past and present is very thin,” says Irwin in this week’s Enterprise podcast.

His students are reading Timothy Snyder’s “Black Earth” in which Snyder draws direct connections between what Hitler’s world view was in the 1930s and what Putin is doing today. Hitler and Putin are “working off a similar set of assumptions, a similar argument that politics is a struggle for survival. It’s a zero-sum game. There’s no such thing as progress,” says Irwin

But Irwin also has his students consider the worth of analogies from history because every moment is different.

In our current moment in history, Irwin sees us coming out of a period where, on both the right and the left, there has been an embracing of radicalism without consequence. Through social media, he believes, people can espouse views without thinking of what the consequences would be in a real community.

There’s less of an emphasis on common ground, says Irwin, on allowing for rival viewpoints to come into conflict with each other while also maintaining a common space or sense of community.

Putin has hinted at using nuclear weapons in launching this war so certainly as citizens of the world we have a common fear. There would be no winners in a nuclear war; the whole world loses.

But a common fear is far different than a sense of community.

We hearken back to words written after the last world war by Martin Niemöller. A Lutheran pastor in Germany, he became a critic of Adolf Hitler and spent seven years in a concentration camp.

“First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out — because I was not a socialist,” Niemöller wrote. “Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out — because I was not a trade unionist. Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out — because I was not a Jew. Then they came for me — and there was no one left to speak for me.”

I live in Guilderland. But I am a citizen of the world. I am not as brave as the Russians who are now protesting their country’s attack on Ukraine — they face terrible consequences.

We live in the United States of America where, for now, we are able to speak our minds without fear of reprisals. We believe this invasion is wrong. And we need to do what we can to allow Ukraine to determine its own destiny.