There is no justification for Russia’s brutal invasion of Ukraine — and there never could be. The official fairy tales about the need to “denazify” the country, or stop the supposed genocide of a constructed “Russian other” within its borders, would be farcical if not accompanied by such violence. Emanating from an authoritarian and violently pro-market regime, the concurrent pro- and anti- Soviet nostalgia, the hints toward imperial revival, and the mixed bag of references used again today to conflate the “great patriotic war” with anti-fascism are mere threadbare excuses.

The Russian state deserves to be held accountable for its bombing campaign, the shelling of humanitarian corridors, the occupation of cities, and the murder of civilians. The horror that is taking place in Mariupol and Kharkiv should haunt those responsible until the end of their days.

It is, nonetheless, worth remaining sober about the motives, interests, and aims of those leading the Western opposition to Vladimir Putin’s war. We need to create a space in which pointing out the contradictions between Western policy and the actual needs of people in Ukraine does not get translated as some form of “appeasement” or, worse, as apologia for Russia’s military onslaught.