The Russian takeover was not about self-defense or restoring calm, as Vitaly had alleged. It was a military invasion of territory that the Soviet Union had made part of Ukraine in 1954, but which Putin and many Russian nationalists wanted to be part of Russia. “Russia has every right to wish that events in Ukraine had turned out differently,” I concluded, “but it does not have the right to express that unhappiness by using military force or by trying to convince the world community that up is down and black is white.”
