Russian propagandists claim that there is no right and no good, and so everything is permitted. The consequences of that view are all around me in de-occupied Ukraine, in the death pits I saw at Bucha, in ruined settlements such as Posad Pokrovs’ke, in concentration camps such as Yahidne. Russian soldiers in Ukraine speak of cities they destroy as “liberated.” And indeed: all barriers, from their perspective, have been removed. They can bulldoze the rubble and the corpses, as in Mariupol, build something else, sell it. In that negative sense of free, they are free to murder and steal.
