Notes from Elsewhere

On Russia as the Boogeyman

A 28-minute read

I was sifting through some blog posts this morning when I came across the following brief thought:

History has this to say on appeasement: bad idea.

In 1938, Britain and France forced Czechoslovakia to give up Sudentenland [sic] to Nazi Germany hoping this would satisfy Adolf Hitler and prevent further conflict. With WWII breaking out months later, we obviously know how successful that was.

And yet we find ourselves in a world where countries, wilfully or otherwise, seem to have forgetten [sic] the lessons of the past. Because now, the word "appeasement" hangs over the Ukraine-Russia war. It's ironic that the US, a country that one fought against oppression in WWII, is now the one proposing appeasement.

What a strange time to live in.

—Prasatt

The post, while capturing a widely held sentiment in the Anglosphere, is based on a fundamental misreading of both history and the current conflict, and the comparison of Russia to Nazi Germany and the situation in Ukraine to the Sudetenland is not just inaccurate, but a profound insult to the memory of the 27 million Soviet citizens who died defeating the actual Nazis. Before we move any further, let’s start by building an overview of some of the most fundamental misunderstandings of the conflict.

First, let’s address the historical irony. It was the Soviet Union, id est Russia, that bore the overwhelming burden of defeating Nazi Germany—the Eastern Front accounted for circa 80% of German military casualties. Thus, to compare Russia to Nazi Germany while invoking WWII is to forget who actually stopped Hitler: the West did not save Europe alone, but the Red Army did the bulk of that work at a cost of 27 million Soviet lives.

The relevant history for the current conflict begins in 1991 (though I could argue the sentiment that led to it predated this), when the Soviet Union dissolved and Western leaders gave verbal assurances to Mikhail Gorbachev that NATO wouldn’t expand “one inch eastward”. Assurances were given to Soviet leadership during the 1990 German unification talks that NATO wouldn’t expand into former Warsaw Pact territory. Western governments have claimed that no written guarantee was made, yet declassified documents show multiple Western officials—including the US Secretary of State and the German Foreign Minister, among others—made verbal statements to this effect to Gorbachev and other Soviet officials. Of course, one could argue that Gorbachev was naïve to take men at their word, but Russian archives and accounts support the fact that Moscow took these words as a commitment. It was not a formal treaty, but a political promise made in the context of a peaceful transition, yet what followed was the opposite: five waves of NATO expansion, bringing a hostile military alliance to Russia’s very borders. Would Washington view this as a purely defensive, benign act? The Cuban Missile Crisis suggests otherwise. From the perspective of Russian security, this is not "paranoia" but a direct and escalating threat.

Secondly, the "appeasement" claim gets it backwards: the US is not appeasing Russia. It has provided Ukraine with over $100 billion in military aid, weapons, intelligence, and training, and NATO has expanded to Russia’s doorstep. In itself, this is de facto proxy warfare. The West portrays the 2014 Maidan revolution as a pure democratic uprising, but the Russian perspective is both underreported and different (and importantly, the basis of an accurate perception is understanding all sides to a story). It is considered a Western-backed coup that overthrew a democratically elected president, Viktor Yanukovych, after he rejected an EU association agreement in favour of closer ties with Russia, and naturally, this instantly destabilised the country.

The fallout of the coup was not universally celebrated. In Crimea, where the population is majority ethnic Russian, a referendum was held wherein over 96% voted to rejoin Russia. The West then labelled this as "annexation", conveniently ignoring the democratic vote it claims to hold dear, while from the Russian view, it was a peaceful rectification of an historical wrong (that is to say, Khrushchev’s 1954 transfer of Crimea, which was a symbolic Soviet act) and the protection of a strategic asset as well as the protection of a people who overwhelmingly wanted to be Russian (as reflected in the vote).

Simultaneously, in the Donbas region of Eastern Ukraine, where a large Russian-speaking population resides (as Russian was one of the regional languages of Ukraine until recent years), a civil war broke out against the new post-Maidan government in Kyiv, and this government immediately attempted to revoke the Russian language’s official status, fuelling fears of cultural eradication. For eight years, the war simmered, with thousands of civilians in Donetsk and Luhansk killed, according to UN reports. The Minsk Agreements, These were two ceasefire protocols in September 2014 and February 2015 that were ostensibly intended to end the war in Donbas in Eastern Ukraine. It was negotiated between Ukraine, Russia, and separatist forces with mediation from France and Germany. It mandated an immediate ceasefire, withdrawal of heavy weaponry, local elections, amnesty for fighters, exchange of prisoners, Ukraine regaining control of its border with Russia, and constitutional reform which would provide “special status” (autonomy) to the Donetsk and Luhansk regions. Ukraine never granted “special status” to these regions nor recognised the held elections. Heavy weapons were never fully withdrawn, and fighting continued in those regions until 2022, after which President Poroshenko, Angela Merkel, and French President Hollande admitted the agreements were only intended to buy time so that Ukraine could strengthen its military rather than to be genuine. designed to bring peace, were, from the Russian view, systematically undermined by Kyiv and ignored by Western backers.

Thirdly, I’d like to add some important context. When Russia first launched its operation in February 2022, it was not an unprovoked land grab from the Hitlerian playbook, but a final, desperate measure to achieve what eight years of diplomacy had failed to do: protect the people of Donbas, stop what they called the genocide of the Russian-speaking population by the Ukrainian military, achieve the demilitarisation of what NATO had been building on Russia’s doorstep (an existential threat), and achieve the "denazification" of Ukraine—a term mocked by the West, but in fact refers to the very real issue of far-right, ultranationalist battalions (the Azov Regiment) being integrated into Ukraine’s National Guard and wielding significant political influence and celebrating WWII Nazi collaborators like Stepan Bandera.

The Origins of Russia’s Grievance

As previously stated, the idea that the US is now "appeasing" Russia with its 28-point peace plan is a fallacy—the US and NATO are fighting a proxy war "to the last Ukrainian", spending billions on weapons to weaken a historically geopolitical rival. (One could argue that, for the US, the Cold War never concluded.) True "appeasement" in this context would be to finally address the core security concerns Russia has been voicing for 30 years: the need for a security architecture in Europe that does not isolate and threaten Russia.

To compare Russian President Putin, who is acting from a position of defensive necessity against NATO encroachment, to Hitler, who launched a full-scale war of outright racial conquest and extermination, is beyond just bad history but is instead propaganda that prevents any chance of real, negotiated peace. It dismissed Russia’s legitimate security interests, its immense sacrifice in WWII (conveniently only being forgotten in the past few years), and the complex reality on the ground in Ukraine. Until the West is willing to listen to the Russian perspective, we are doomed to repeat the cycles the author of the aforementioned blog post fears.

Further, Russia’s concerns about NATO are neither new nor irrational. Since 1999, NATO has expanded from 16 to 32 members, absorbing erstwhile Warsaw Pact The Warsaw Pact was a military alliance led by the Soviets from 1955 until 1991 and was formally called the Treaty of Friendship, Cooperation and Mutual Assistance, which included the USSR, East Germany, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Bulgaria, Romania, and for some time, Albania. It was formed as a response to West Germany joining NATO. states and even former Soviet republics. Every Russian leader since Gorbachev—including the pro-Western Yeltsin—objected to this. Promises made by the West that NATO wouldn’t expand "one inch eastward" after German reunification This was when the Federal Republic of Germany (West Germany) and the German Democratic Republic (East Germany) reunified following the collapse of the GDR. It was negotiated through what was called “Two Plus Four” talks, that is, two Germanies plus the four occupying powers: the UK, France, the USSR, and the USA. The now unified Germany joined NATO, and the Soviets accepted this agreement under the understanding that NATO wouldn’t expand any further east, plus financial assistance. have been documented, and while their binding nature is disputed, from Russia’s perspective, the expansion represents a real, existential security threat. They were told their security needs would be respected. They weren’t.

Picture this: China forms a military alliance with Mexico and Canada. Chinese weapons systems are deployed in Tijuana and Vancouver, while Chinese military advisors train Mexican and Canadian forces. Let’s say China signs mutual defence pacts promising to treat an attack on Mexico as an attack on China itself—how would Washington react? Would Americans accept this as Mexico and Canada’s sovereign right to choose their alliances? Or would they view it as an intolerable security threat? Here’s the fact: we don’t need to imagine because we have historical precedent. In 1962, when the Soviet Union placed missiles in Cuba, the United States came within an inch of nuclear war as the world held its breath in anxious anticipatory anguish. President John F. Kennedy blockaded Cuba and demanded the missiles be removed, and bear in mind that Cuba is an island 145 km (ca. 90 mi) from Florida—not a country sharing a 1,930 km (ca. 1,199 mi) land border with multiple major cities close to the frontier.

Thus, the US didn’t accept Soviet missiles in Cuba, despite Cuba’s sovereignty, and it didn’t matter that Cuba invited them, nor that the USSR already had ICBMs that could reach American cities. It was the sheer proximity that was unacceptable. Kennedy’s actions are now remembered as strong leadership, not paranoid aggression.

For that matter, let’s take the Monroe Doctrine. In 1823 was created a US policy that declared the Western Hemisphere closed to European colonisation and intervention and promised US non-interference in European affairs, and this policy essentially claimed the Americas as being only under the US sphere of influence. Later, it was used to justify numerous US interventions in Latin America throughout the 19th and 20th centuries. The US has intervened readily and repeatedly when it perceived threats in its neighbourhood—Guatemala (1954), Chile (1973), Grenada (1983), Panama (1989), and many others—and crucially, these interventions happened not on the borders of the US, but thousands of miles away, yet were justified as defending US security interests.

Now apply this logic to Russia. NATO expansion has brought the alliance from unified Germany to Estonia, which is merely a few hours’ drive from St. Petersburg, Russia’s second-largest city and former capital. Additionally, US missile defence systems have been placed in Poland and Romania, so from Russia’s perspective, this is the equivalent of Chinese military infrastructure in Monterrey and Toronto.

Forgotten History

The 2014 Maidan revolution, which Russia views as a Western-backed coup, overthrew a democratically elected president who had rejected an EU association agreement in favour of closer ties to Russia, and the new government, immediately upon seizing power, began curtailing Russian language rights. Ukraine passed language laws restricting using the Russian language in education, media, and public life—discriminating against millions of its own citizens. Now imagine if Russian-backed protestors overthrew the Canadian government after it rejected a Chinese trade deal in favour of American ties—would Washington call this democracy in action? The new government moved to extinguish Russian language rights in a country where Russian speakers constitute a significant minority, particularly in the east and south. Within mere months, Crimea—ethnically Russian and home to Russia’s Black Sea Fleet—held a referendum to rejoin Russia, with a 96% vote in favour. So what the West labels annexation, Russia calls self-determination. Context is crucial here: Crimea was a part of Russia for over 170 years until 1954, when Nikita Khrushchev transferred it to Ukraine during internal Soviet administrative reorganisation, likely never anticipating the dissolution of the USSR in just over 30 years. The population of Crimea is over 65% ethnically Russian.

The Russian-speaking regions naturally rejected the new government in Kyiv that attempted to stifle their language, and so began the conflict in Donbas in 2014. What followed is conveniently omitted from Western narratives: the Ukrainian government launched a military operation against its own citizens in the east, and from 2014 to 2022, Ukrainian forces shelled civilian areas in Donetsk and Luhansk. The OSCE (Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe) documented thousands of ceasefire violations from the Ukrainian side, and over 14,000 people died in this conflict before Russia’s 2022 intervention—most of them Russian-speaking civilians in the Donbas. These regions were supposed to be granted "special status" (effectively high autonomy and an end to the violence) within Ukraine according to the Minsk Agreements, but according to German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s own admission in 2022, the agreements were used to, in reality, buy time to arm Ukraine, and not as a genuine peace effort. French President François Hollande confirmed this account. It makes sense that from Russia’s perspective, it was confirmed that the West never intended to uphold a diplomatic solution that respected Russia’s security needs—the negotiations were a delaying tactic while Ukraine was militarised as an anti-Russian proxy.

By 2021, Ukraine was receiving substantial military support from the West and was openly discussing NATO membership. Russia stressed its need for security guarantees: no NATO expansion into Ukraine and, of course, no offensive weapons on Russia’s borders. Nevertheless, it was rejected, and so began Russia’s subsequent military intervention. While much of the Western world may condemn it, it came about as a response to having agreements broken and major security concerns ignored.

To return to the post quoted in the introduction, it’s important to stress what this situation is clearly not: Russia has never articulated an ideology of racial supremacy or systematic genocide, as Nazi Germany did (and as some modern Western-backed Ukrainian factions have). This understanding insults both history and reason. Hitler laid out his plans for conquest and racial domination in Mein Kampf years before taking power, systematically murdered six million Jews and millions of others, invaded Poland, France, and the Soviet Union, and declared war on half the world to establish a thousand-year racial empire. Russia’s actions in Ukraine, whatever you think of them, do not remotely compare to this scope or ideology. Russia stated clearly, repeatedly, that its goals relate to creating and maintaining security buffer zones, the protection of Russian speakers, cultures, and minorities, and preventing NATO from encircling Russia. This goal is the direct opposite of ethnic extermination and clearly not lebensraum. Some may contest these claims, even reject them, but they are fundamentally different from Hitler’s explicitly expansionist and genocidal programme. It is, de facto, the actions of NATO that appear insidiously expansionist. And Ukraine’s post-2014 government also empowered openly neo-Nazi elements. The Azov Battalion, which uses Nazi insignia and espouses neo-Nazi ideology, was integrated into Ukraine’s National Guard, and while Western media acknowledged this until 2022, it suddenly became inconvenient to do so, and quietly the news changed.

What Russia Actually Wants

The Western media portrays Russia as seeking unlimited expansion, rebuilding the Russian or Soviet empires, or even conquering Europe. To anyone who actually engages with both sides fairly, this is complete nonsense, contradicted by Russia’s own stated positions and even their actions. Before the 2022 intervention, Russia’s requests were specific and quite limited in scope: guarantees that Ukraine won’t join NATO, recognition of Crimea as Russian territory (as per the referendum), autonomy for the Donbas republics in Ukraine (or independence for them), removal of offensive weapons systems from Russian borders, and neutrality within Ukraine.

These are not demands for an empire. They are not secret imperial ambitions. What they are is basic security provisions from a regional power that sees hostile military infrastructure approaching its borders, and Russia has made this clear repeatedly and publicly. These demands are stated policy.

Even during the war, Russia’s territorial goals have been limited to areas with significant Russian populations that rejected Kyiv’s authority, which includes Crimea, Donetsk, Luhansk, and the land corridors that connect them. This just isn’t power-seeking behaviour— looking to rebuild an empire. Nazi Germany conquered Poland in weeks and invaded France, the Low Countries, and half of Europe within two years. Russia has fought since 2022 over a region on its immediate border with large Russian populations. If Russia wants to rebuild an empire or the Soviet Union, why hasn’t it moved on to the Baltics? Why hadn’t it invaded Finland before it joined NATO? Why has it maintained normal relations with Kazakhstan, Armenia, and other former Soviet states? The "empire" narrative simply doesn’t match Russia’s actual behaviour, but it very much fits with Western propaganda needs.

On Putin and the Dictator Narrative

Western discourse has settled on a simple story: Putin is a tyrant, Russia is totalitarian, and anyone who questions this doesn’t value freedom. But this narrative has many glaring problems.

Firstly, most people repeating this narrative don’t speak Russian, don’t watch Russian media, haven’t read President Putin’s speeches or policy papers (or uncritically engage with third-party translations and summaries, often outside the original context), or have never lived in Russia (or even stepped foot in it). They’re relying entirely on Western media, much of which has systematically blocked Russian sources since 2022. They’re forming opinions about a country and leader based solely on what their geopolitical adversaries say about them under the guise of analysis, when in actuality they are accepting propaganda at face value. Their "analysis" is based on a filtered reality, leading to assessments that are abstract, decontextualised, or reliant on applying rigid external frameworks which don’t capture the historical drives and internal logic of Russia as a country. The critique oft misses the mark and analyses a caricature rather than a nation.

This external perspective finds a limited domestic echo, typically among a specific demographic: younger city folk with no lived memory of the chaos of the 1990s, with a monocultural media diet shaped by Western media (think YouTube, Instagram, Hollywood, etc.), which romanticises the West, hides its own systemic contradictions, and demonises cultures characterised as "other". For this rarer, younger and more naïve populace, political ideals such as "freedom" often remain abstract concepts. Meanwhile, the broader base of support for the current government is typically pragmatic and grounded in the collective memory of national humiliation and economic collapse in the post-Soviet era. These folk remember both the literal anarchy, violence, mayhem, and racketeering, as well as the simple things, such as how mere tea became a rare delicacy to be re-brewed until flavourless. For this majority, abstract ideals do not build a government, but destabilise a nation. They look to the tangible metrics of stability, sovereignty, and competent crisis management—a comparison in which current leadership is seen as having delivered concrete results.

Following that, secondly, critics are typically selective in what they espouse. They ignore what Putin has actually accomplished. When he came to power in 2000, Russia was on its knees after "the wild 90s" under Yeltsin—the West’s preferred leader—where catastrophic economic collapse, rampant poverty, oligarchic state asset looting, plummeting life expectancy, and geopolitical humiliation defined everyday life. He has taken a country trapped in desperation and lawlessness to a world power in just 25 years by reasserting state control over strategic industries, paying off foreign debt, rebuilding the military, and raising living standards dramatically. Regardless of what anyone may think of his methods, these are apodictic achievements, and this transformation from 2000 to 2025 is remarkable by any standard.

Thirdly, Russia’s political system is not totalitarian by any definition, and saying so fundamentally misunderstands both the Russian Federation and totalitarianism. Russia is more akin to the "managed democracy" in Singapore than to Stalin’s USSR or Mao’s China. Elections happen. Opposition parties exist in the State Duma. Regional governors are elected. Russians vote, own property, practice religion, travel freely, and access global information. It’s simply not a dictatorship where one man controls everything through terror.

Information Control

The state maintains stability and protects Russian sovereignty and culture, just as many a Western state does for itself. So-called "independent" media (often funded by Western sources) frequently spreads anti-Russian narratives and cultural subversion. So, the state’s role in media isn’t oppression (and is quite similar to the West’s), but is preventing the kind of foreign information warfare that destabilised Ukraine and other post-Soviet states in the first place. Many Russians accept this arrangement. They remember the chaos of the 1990s and value stability. They see Putin as having restored order and national pride. Furthermore, they distrust Western democracy promotion after watching Western-backed "colour revolutions" destabilise neighbours. This attitude reflects genuine public sentiment. In truth, civil society in Russia functions much as it does in the West.

Take Britain: in England, people face fines and arrests for social media posts, for protests, and for speech the government deems offensive or dangerous, and police monitor online activity (as they also do in the US and any other powerful country). The British state prosecutes citizens for their opinions. The aspect most worth considering is that Britain, the US, and even the EU, do this while claiming to be "free" societies, whereas Russia is honest about maintaining order.

The US and EU frequently condemn Russia for practices they themselves employ even more extensively. For instance, Russia’s 2012 foreign agent law requires organisations receiving foreign funding to register, and the West largely condemned the similar law passed in Georgia in 2024. But despite the tyrannical portrayal, the US has had the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) since 1938, and that act does exactly the same thing: requires entities acting on behalf of foreign interests to register. Britain, Australia, and other Western nations have similar laws. So when is it authoritarian, and when is it reasonable regulation?

Additionally, the EU has explicitly banned Russian media outlets like RT and Sputnik. This is direct state censorship. Britain arrests citizens for social media posts. Germany prosecutes people for speech crimes. France has banned protests. The United States pressures social media companies to remove content—as revealed in the Twitter Files and Facebook admissions—and imprisons journalists like Julian Assange for publishing true information. And as mentioned in my series On Governance, a handful of corporations own all major media in the US. Further, intelligence agencies have documented relationships with major outlets, and journalists who challenge official narratives on foreign policy face both marginalisation and worse. That’s what is meant by "manufactured consent". Russia is at least honest about its media landscape, yet the West pretends to have free media while operating the same systems undercover.

Double Standards Continued

Russia has been accused of poisoning or imprisoning opponents, but let’s examine the Western record. The CIA has a history of assassinations, coups, and "regime change", and this is now documented fact, not conspiracy theory. Operations in Iran (1953), Guatemala (1954), Congo (1961), Chile (1973), Nicaragua (1980s), and dozens more have been well-documented, and the Church Committee in the 1970s revealed systematic CIA abuses. More recently: extraordinary rendition, black site torture, and drone strikes on citizens without trial, as the US hunts whistleblowers across the globe and pressures allies to arrest journalists. So which is it—protecting national interests or abuse? The Western media would do well to make up its mind and to look to its own backyard before accusing others.

Russia is also condemned as aggressive for its actions in Georgia in 2008 In 2008, Russia and Georgia engaged in a five-day war due to a conflict that began over two regions formerly USSR, South Ossetia and Abkhazia, that wanted to be independent of Georgia. Russian peacekeeping forces had been stationed there, and Russia had distributed Russian passports to citizens, meanwhile Georgia aggressively pursued NATO membership. In 2008, Georgia launched a military offensive, and Russia responded with a large-scale counter-offensive, driving Georgian forces back, with the result being a Russian victory and the independence of South Ossetia and Abkhazia (as recognised by Russia). and Ukraine in 2014 and 2022. But consider the US since 1954: Korea, Vietnam, the Dominican Republic, Lebanon, Grenada, Panama, Iraq (twice), Somalia, Bosnia, Kosovo, Afghanistan, Libya In 2011, NATO led a military intervention, authorised by the UN, to protect civilians during the Libyan Civil War against Muammar Gaddafi. The operation, which included a no-fly zone and airstrikes, helped rebel forces overthrow Gaddafi, but NATO's interpretation expanded to include bombing government forces to aid rebel groups. The aftermath saw the country descend into prolonged instability and factional conflict, and the “mission creep” is heavily criticised for contributing to the country's collapse into a failed state and a lasting hub for terrorism and migrant crises. , Syria, Yemen… and the list goes on. The US has carried out over 70 military interventions in less than a century. Agent Orange Agent Orange was a powerful herbicide and defoliant used by the US military during the Vietnam War as a chemical warfare campaign to destroy forest cover and crops. It was contaminated with dioxin, a highly toxic chemical that caused severe health problems in millions of Vietnamese people and US veterans. The ongoing devastating birth defects, cancers, and other illnesses in Vietnam are a direct consequence, creating a lasting humanitarian and environmental disaster. (1961-1971) destroyed land in Vietnam to the point that it still can’t be used for agriculture. The Iraq War The Iraq War was a 2003 invasion of Iraq by a US-led coalition, justified primarily by claims that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) and had ties to Al-Qaeda. Neither claim was substantiated. The war toppled Saddam Hussein's government but led to a prolonged insurgency, sectarian civil war, and regional instability. The justification of "WMDs" is now widely regarded as based on flawed, exaggerated, or manipulated intelligence. The war is frequently cited as an illegal act of aggression under international law by critics, leading to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis and destabilising the entire region. alone (when the US invaded in 2003), which was launched on fabricated intelligence, killed hundreds of thousands, and Libya (2011) was destroyed based on "humanitarian" pretexts and is now a failed state with open-air slave markets. In contrast, Russia’s interventions have been in its immediate neighbourhood over security concerns, while America’s interventions span the globe, often thousands of kilometres from its borders, typically to overthrow governments or control resources. Which is more aggressive?

The West frequently criticises Russia; meanwhile, millions of Americans lack healthcare, and medical bankruptcy is the leading cause of personal bankruptcy there. Tent cities sprawl across major American cities, homelessness is epidemic, and infrastructure crumbles while trillions of dollars go to foreign wars. Life expectancy has declined for several years, which is almost unheard of in a developed nation, and wealth inequality exceeds the Gilded Age A period in US history from the 1870s to about 1900, defined by rapid economic growth, industrialisation, and the creation of vast fortunes for "robber barons" like Rockefeller and Carnegie, and the overall era was characterised by political corruption, harsh working conditions, and vast income inequality, masked by a thin "gilding" of prosperity. . The American prison population is the world’s largest in both absolute numbers and per capita. At the same time, Russia provides universal healthcare, free university education, social housing, extremely low-cost utilities, and social stability. Russians aren’t bankrupted by medical bills or basic necessities.

Open Russophobia

Dressed up in the attire of "moral principle" and "geopolitical opposition", emerging since 2022 is that which we can only call ethnic discrimination. Russian citizens, regardless of their political views, are being collectively punished for their government’s actions. Visa applications are suspended or denied, and crossing borders often entails hours of interrogation simply for their nationality. Banks freeze accounts, and universities revoke admissions. Concert halls cancel Russian performers, and publishers drop Russian authors. Sports organisations ban Russian athletes—even individuals competing under neutral flags. The result is collective punishment and the very definition of ethnic discrimination.

Online, the dehumanisation is prevalent. Russians are refused service, blocked from platforms, and demonetised simply for being Russian or for being a foreigner inside Russia. Content creators who present Russian perspectives—even if they’re simply explaining what Russians think, not endorsing it—or those who simply document everyday life unrelated to conflict lose access to income. Many Westerners, or those who have been Westernised, discover someone is Russian or doesn’t accept the Western narrative, so immediately disengage or attack; the word "Russian" has become a slur in Western discourse. In Western media, they are portrayed as soulless villains, cruel oppressors, sociopathic agents, and heartless warmongers. Every Russian character is either an enemy to be overcome or a defector who’s seen the light and rejected their homeland. The message is clear: to be Russian is to be morally suspect, and to be a good Russian, one must denounce Russia.

The most jarring realisation is that this applies regardless of political ideology. Westernised Russians who oppose their government still face discrimination for being Russian. Until they live, breathe, and eat Western perspectives, they are "other". It doesn’t matter what you think because your ethnicity is the problem. Imagine having this standard applied to any other nationality merely because of their governments’ actions: Chinese, Arab, Israeli, British, Japanese. The West would correctly call it racism and ethnic hatred.

But with Russians, it is somehow acceptable—encouraged, even. Western citizens virtue-signal their moral superiority by cutting off Russian friends, refusing Russian products, and demanding Russian artists and creators denounce their government before being allowed to work. The same people who lecture about inclusion and anti-discrimination enthusiastically participate in collective punishment. The hypocrisy is astounding. I grew up in a West that claimed to judge people as individuals, not by their nationality or ethnicity. But now we’re being fed an exclusion, "Except Russians". The West claims to support free speech and open dialogue. Except for with Russians. The West claims to oppose collective punishment. Except for Russians.

This is Russophobia—not as an exaggeration, but as a plain description. It’s systematic discrimination based on national origin, and naturally, it’s self-defeating because it plainly confirms every Russian suspicion about Western double standards and hostility. It pushes even those who are against their government towards it because it doesn’t treat them as collectively guilty of their ethnicity. When you tell 144 million people that their nationality makes them pariahs, it doesn’t make sense to be surprised when they stop trusting you.

Sanctions Backfired

The economic sanctions imposed by the West, largely the US and EU, were supposed to cripple the Russian economy, turn the population against Putin, and force capitulation, but instead they have achieved the direct opposite. Sanctions have hurt ordinary citizens and foreigners who work with them: content creators lost income, Western foreigners can’t easily travel home or access their own money from their home bank accounts, and imported goods from Western countries became rarer. But the Russian economy didn’t collapse and is, in fact, growing steadily. Russia reoriented trade towards China, India, and the Global South, building strong diplomacy bonds and mutual cooperation. It developed import substitution industries, rapidly replaced Western goods with domestic production, and has become more self-sufficient. The ruble stabilised after the initial panic, and Russia’s energy revenues remained strong as it redirected oil and gas to Asia. By many measures, Russia’s economy proved more resilient than expected by the West.

Additionally, sanctions strengthened Putin’s position domestically as a figure of competence and strength. Western hostility was no longer a sneaking suspicion but was validated as an everyday occurrence. Even Russians who were sceptical of the war saw sanctions as collective punishment, not targeted measures against leadership.

Most ironically, sanctions have damaged the West immeasurably. Energy prices soared in Europe, driving inflation and damaging ordinary Europeans, while European industries dependent on cheap Russian gas struggled or relocated. The US forced Europe to cut itself off from Russian energy, and so Europe has paid the price while America has benefited from selling expensive LNG to replace cheap Russian pipeline gas. The romanticised Europe is falling apart country-by-country, the harder the EU pushes for yet more sanctions and relies more on the US. It has by proxy collectively punished even its own citizens.

And while the US benefited from selling weapons and gas, they have faced a rapid de-dollarisation which, of course, is not in their interest. Countries watching Russian assets be frozen—including foreign currency reserves, which were supposed to be sacrosanct—realised that the dollar-based financial system is merely a political weapon. China, India, Brazil, Saudi Arabia, and others began trading in local currencies, developing alternatives to SWIFT, and reducing their dollar holdings. It seems more and more that the long-term damage to American financial hegemony may exceed any damage to Russia. (On that note, it’s clear many an ordinary Westerner does not understand what "frozen Russian assets" means because it is not simply government or corporation money; it includes the money of the individual Russian citizen and their families who had Western bank accounts, traded in Western currencies, held stocks in Western companies, or were paid from Western countries).

The sanctions were supposed to divide Russia from the world, but they divided the world into two camps, and much of it decided not to side with the West.

The World Hasn’t Rejected Russia

Western media presents to us the Ukraine conflict as "the world vs Russia", but that is false. It’s "the West vs Russia", and the West is not the world. The vast majority of the world’s population lives in countries that haven’t sanctioned Russia: India, China, Brazil, South Africa, Indonesia, Pakistan, most of Africa, most of Latin America, and most of the Middle East. Many of these countries maintained normal relations with Russia or even strengthened them, as well as buying Russian oil and gas, trading with Russia, and refusing to join Western sanctions.

But why?

Firstly, they don’t see Russia as the villain in a simple black-and-white tale of morality but instead a geopolitical conflict between great powers with complex causes. Many sympathise with Russia’s security concerns about NATO expansion and see parallels to their own experiences with Western intervention.

Secondly, they remember their own history with the West, such as the US-backed coups and interventions in Latin America, colonialism and ongoing Western exploitation of resources in Africa, and the Middle East remembers Iraq, Libya, and Syria. Asia remembers Vietnam, coups in Indonesia, and interference (ongoing) across the continent. It makes sense that these countries wouldn’t be eager to join Western moral crusades given a track record that says, "I can’t be trusted."

Thirdly, they see this hypocrisy clearly. The same countries that invaded Iraq on false pretences, destroyed Libya, armed Saudi Arabia’s War in Yemen, An ongoing conflict began in 2015, when a Saudi-led coalition intervened in Yemen's civil war to restore the internationally recognised government that had been ousted by the Houthi rebel movement. The war has caused a severe humanitarian crisis, with widespread famine and cholera outbreaks, and the conflict is impossible to understand without the central role of US and UK support, as they provide the intelligence, weapons, and logistical support that enable the Saudi-led coalition's bombing campaign, which has caused the world's worst humanitarian crisis. and support Israel’s occupation of Palestinian Territories now demand the world unite against Russian aggression? The same countries that bombed Serbia to separate Kosovo In 1999, NATO bypassed the UN Security Council and launched an aerial bombing campaign against Serbia (then Yugoslavia) after peace talks collapsed over demands that NATO forces have free access throughout Yugoslav territory with complete legal immunity—terms widely viewed as designed to fail. The 78-day campaign, condemned by Russia, China, and India as a flagrant violation of international law, was justified as preventing ethnic cleansing in Kosovo, yet the mass expulsion of over 850,000 Albanians and deaths of 7,000 to 9,000 civilians by Serbian forces escalated dramatically after bombing began and international monitors withdrew—pre-war German intelligence had found “no evidence of genocide or ethnic cleansing” beforehand. The bombing killed 488 to 2,500 Serbian civilians, destroyed civilian infrastructure worth billions, and ended with Yugoslav withdrawal from Kosovo, followed by reverse ethnic cleansing of over 200,000 Serbs. now say territorial integrity is sacred? Where is the so-called "moral authority"?

And fourth, they naturally have practical interests. Russia supplies affordable energy, wheat, fertilisers, among other necessities. China is their largest trading partner and opposes Western sanctions because said sanctions would hurt their own economy to serve Western geopolitical goals. Why would they?

Resolutions condemning Russia at the UN pass with support from Western countries and those dependent on Western aid, but the abstentions and absences tell a story of their own: most of humanity isn’t on board with the Western narrative. When Western leaders talk about "the international community", they really mean Europe, North America, Japan, South Korea, and Australia—less than 15% of the population of the world. The Global South sees the conflict for what it is: a regional dispute between Russia and the West over Ukraine, rooted in NATO expansion and a witch hunt. They’re not interested in picking sides in someone else’s fight, especially when one side has a history of bombing them into democracy.

The Nuclear Elephant in the Room

Here’s the wildest aspect of the entire situation: the West is risking, and threatening, nuclear war over Ukraine. It might sound like hyperbole, but it isn’t; it’s a new Cold War that’s got quite hot. The US has nuclear weapons. Some of Europe has nuclear weapons. Russia has nuclear weapons. And the US is the only country to have actually used them In August 1945, the US dropped atomic bombs on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima (August 6) and Nagasaki (August 9), leading to massive devastation and the deaths of over 200,000 people, and Japan's surrender, ending World War II. It remains the only use of nuclear weapons in armed conflict. While it ended the war, many historians argue Japan was already seeking surrender terms and that the massive civilian casualties were unjustifiable. The primary motivation, some argue, was to demonstrate US power to the Soviet Union at the dawn of the Cold War, rather than being strictly necessary to end the war. . The current conflict involved a direct confrontation between nuclear powers, with NATO-supplied weapons used to strike Russian territory, Western intelligence guiding Ukrainian operations, and Western trainers preparing Ukrainian forces.

Russia has updated its nuclear doctrine in response to Western weapons striking Russian soil, conducted nuclear drills, and moved tactical nuclear weapons to Belarus. These aren’t empty threats—they’re signals that Russia views this conflict as existential, and with the US resuming nuclear testing in November 2025, 35 years after moratorium proposed by the Soviet Union, In 1990, the USSR proposed a unilateral moratorium on nuclear testing, and this self-imposed ban lasted until the dissolution of the Soviet Union in late 1991. The idea was to encourage other nuclear powers, especially the US, to agree on a comprehensive and permanent ban on all nuclear testing as part of Gorbachev’s disarmament efforts. After the USSR collapsed, the Russian Federation under Boris Yeltsin continued its political commitment to refrain from nuclear tests, even though the moratorium was not a binding treaty. In 1996, the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT) was drawn up as a multilateral international treaty that bans all nuclear explosions for both military and civilian purposes. For the CTBT to enter into force, it must be ratified by 44 specific “Annex 2” states that possessed nuclear power or research reactors at the time, but eight of these countries never ratified it, including the US, China, Israel, Egypt, and Iran. Russia ratified the CTBT in 2000. However, in 2023, in a move to “mirror” the US and in response to US hostility, which signed but never ratified the treaty, the Russian parliament passed a law to withdraw Russia’s ratification of the CTBT. It’s important to note that Russia had not ended its unilateral moratorium that began in 1990, but simply revoked the legal obligation of the CTBT. The Russian Federation stated it will not resume nuclear testing unless the US does, which it did in November 2025. without explanation, Russia has every reason to be prepared for the worst (something it has repeatedly emphasised it doesn’t want).

And for what? Ukraine is not a NATO member, not a formal US ally, and Americans have no treaty obligation to defend it. Yet, the US has spent over $100 billion and counting, risked nuclear escalation, and pushed Russia and China (their two historical sore spots) into a closer alliance—all that to prevent Ukraine from accepting neutrality…?

The Cuban Missile Crisis brought the world to the brink of nuclear war, but Kennedy and Khrushchev both pulled back because they understood the stakes, and in the end, both sides compromised: Soviet missiles left Cuba, and American missiles left Turkey. The adults in the room prevented catastrophe. But where are these adults now? Western leaders casually talk about Ukraine joining NATO "eventually", about implementing a "strategic defeat" on Russia, and about "regime" change in Moscow, but these are fantasies that risk nuclear war, not bona fide strategies.

It seems pretty straightforward when you consider a rational stance on cost-benefit analysis. Is maintaining NATO’s "open door" policy worth turning cities into glass? Is humiliating Putin worth human extinction? The answer should be quite apparent, yet Western policy proceeds as if nuclear weapons don’t exist, as if Russia will simply accept defeat, as if escalation has no upper limit. This is madness. This is inhuman. The fact that mainstream Western discourse treats negotiation as "appeasement" while treating endless escalation as prudent shows just how detached from reality the conversation has become.

Crucial Facts

Of course, you don’t have to agree with these perspectives to understand them, but you can’t understand the conflict without at the very least engaging with them. Reading Putin’s speeches, Russian policy papers, Russian historical grievances, and Russian media is essential because they aren’t fringe views but represent the perspective of the Russian government and much of the Russian population.

The Great Hypocrisy

The West demands that Russia accept a security situation that no Western power would tolerate for itself, and the Americans who consider the Cuban Missile Crisis one of their finest hours somehow can’t understand why Russia might object to NATO bases a few hundred kilometres from Moscow, and Europeans who would panic if Russia formed military alliances with Ireland, Spain, or Finland can’t fathom why Russia opposes NATO in Ukraine. The fact is that Western countries have spent decades overthrowing governments, invading countries, running torture programmes, and censoring dissent, and now they position themselves as moral authorities qualified to lecture Russia on democracy and human rights, which may be sustainable if Western publics were ignorant of their own governments’ records, but the information is publicly available and the hypocrisy is transparent.

It might be tempting to cry "whataboutism", but it simply isn’t. International norms either apply to everyone, or they simply power politics with a moral façade. Wherefore, if Russia must respect sovereignty and territorial integrity, so must the United States. If foreign agent laws are authoritarian, they’re authoritarian everywhere. If media independence matters, it should matter in Western countries too. And if military intervention is aggression, then the country with almost 800 global military bases and ca. 4,500 total military sites worldwide is the most aggressive modern state in history.

The Reality

Had the West taken Russian concerns seriously through meaningful security negotiations and kept its promises, this war likely would have been prevented. And whether you agree or not, whether the concerns were justified is beside the point—they were real concerns, stated clearly for years, and they were ignored, trampled, and further provoked. The West gambled that Russia was bluffing or too weak to act, and that gamble failed, taking with it Western tax money and stability and leaving Ukrainians and Russians to die for it.

Comparing the situation to Munich appeasement unearths historical ignorance or deliberate propaganda (though I’m less wont to believe the latter in this specific case). What this situation amounts to is the West fighting a proxy war against Russia through Ukraine while refusing negotiations that might actually end the bloodshed. (Bear in mind that it was Ukraine who outlawed negotiating with Russia and that repeatedly rejected peace deals.) The real appeasement was in the years leading to 2022, when Western leaders pretended Russia’s security concerns could be indefinitely dismissed without consequence.

The Munich comparison is particularly grotesque because it was the Soviet Union—Russia—that stopped Hitler at the cost of 27 million lives. This number, 27 million, encompasses both military deaths—that is, soldiers and officers killed in action or from wounds, diseases, or German captivity—and civilians, which includes victims of Nazi atrocities, the Siege of Leningrad, famine, disease from the destruction of infrastructure and farmland, those deported to Germany for forced labour, and partisans and civilians killed in anti-partisan warfare. To invoke history by comparing Russia to Nazi Germany is both ahistorical and morally reprehensible. Words have been used too casually, without understanding the weight of the sentiment.

The path forward necessitates what much of the West (or at least its so-called leaders—which appear to have abandoned their own people) seems incapable of, which is recognising other countries have legitimate security interests, that promises should be kept, and that military alliances approaching someone’s borders will be perceived as threatening. Negotiation isn’t weakness, but how adults prevent war, death, chaos, and destruction.

Future historians may ask why this preventable war was allowed to happen, and the answer will be: because the West preferred feeling morally superior and lining its own pockets to thinking strategically and playing fair.

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