The Slaughter of Iryna Zarutska
I fought for Ukrainians on their own soil. I watched them bleed and die against a brutal invader, and I carried with me the belief that those who stood up for the innocent were fulfilling the highest duty a man can have. Before that, I served in American law enforcement as a military policeman, and I believed the same thing: that the first responsibility of any society is to defend the weak against predators. That is why the murder of Iryna Zarutska on an American commuter train fills me with rage. She fled Putin’s war for safety, only to be slaughtered in daylight in the very country that claims to lead the free world.
Her killer was not a ghost. He was a known repeat offender, a man with more chances than his victims ever received. Judges let him out again and again, clinging to the fantasy that hardened criminals can be rehabilitated simply because ideology demands it. That fantasy ended with Zarutska bleeding to death while passengers stood helpless.
When Justice Becomes Weakness
In Ukraine, where I fought, people know there are no infinite second chances on the battlefield. Yet in America, we hand them out to the violent and the merciless until someone else pays the final price.
I’ve seen what justice looks like when it is taken seriously. In Poland, crime rates are a fraction of those in the United States. Poles still understand something we have forgotten: that protecting the public is more important than protecting the feelings of offenders. There, the rule of law has not been gutted by endless experiments in leniency. Streets are safe not because Poles are wealthier or more fortunate, but because their system refuses to make excuses for predators. They do not confuse compassion with weakness. They do not confuse justice with surrender.
America has fallen into a dangerous pattern of paralysis. Police are undermanned and politically handcuffed. Courts worry more about equity statistics than about protecting families. Politicians weaponize crime only when it benefits their party. We are left with cities where stabbings and shootings have become background noise, where ordinary citizens grow numb to what should be intolerable. I spent years in uniform, both abroad and at home, and I know this much: when fear becomes normal, society is already in decline. A mother shouldn’t think twice about letting her daughter ride a train in daylight. Yet in America, that hesitation is not only common, it is wise.
The Price of Tolerating the Intolerable
The truth is that violent crime has become the one form of inequality we are willing to accept. We will not tolerate inequality of income, of education, of opportunity. But we tolerate, every single day, that some communities live under the constant threat of predation. We tolerate that repeat offenders are freed to wreak havoc again. We tolerate that the innocent must rearrange their lives around the movements of the guilty. And we call this justice.
The West needs to relearn a lesson that should be instinctive. America has grown accustomed to tolerating the intolerable. Murder rates in our cities dwarf those of Europe. Violence is explained away as the product of poverty, racism, or failed policy, but explanations do not bring back the dead. Law enforcement is treated with suspicion, judges hand out slaps on the wrist, and politicians fight over language while criminals fight over victims. We have allowed ideology to replace order. And it is the innocent people like Iryna Zarutska who pay for it.
I fought for Ukraine because I believed in defending the innocent. I wore the badge in America for the same reason. And I cannot accept a society that tells me those values are outdated. A refugee who escaped missiles and artillery fire should not die on an American train because our leaders lack the courage to enforce their own laws. Poland has shown that a nation can be compassionate and still uncompromising about order. The West should take note. Because if we continue down this path of excuses and paralysis, more lives will be wasted, and more promises will be broken.
Iryna Zarutska deserved safety. Instead, she was betrayed by a system too weak to uphold its most basic duty. That is not justice. That is cowardice dressed up as progress.
Benjamin Reed
American Veteran
