Three Reasons Ukraine Has the Right to Invade Russia: On the Morality of Retaliation

Jakub Ferencik
9 min readAug 14, 2024

In retrospect, it’s possible Ukraine has been planning for this invasion into Russia for some time now. Possibly months, maybe since the beginning of their resistance.

That’s not to say that Ukraine is not measured in their response. I think they absolutely are. International law permits attacking the country from which attacks are being waged on your land.

Meanwhile, the West has been slow. Ukraine had to act. And it surprised its allies as well as enemies.

Many of us both on this platform, and out there in the real world, have been disappointed with how slow the international order has been in supplying Ukraine the necessary weapons to repel the Russian invador from Ukraine.

We have also been critical of the restrictions the West (or Global North, to be precise) puts on Ukraine when it comes to using the weapons it chooses to provide.

Granted, under international humanitarian law, countries involved in conflict must clearly distinguish between military targets and civilian objects, and any attack must be proportionate. It’s good to set those restrictions as clear as you can — and the US has done so in Ukraine (but curiosly enough, not in Israel, as I’ve written about here, for example).

That said, consistent Russian strikes continue to terrorize Ukrainian civilians leading to hundreds dead.

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Jakub Ferencik

Journalist in Prague | Author of “Up in the Air,” “Beyond Reason,” & "Surprised by Uncertainty" on AMAZON | MA McGill Uni | 750+ articles with 1+ mil. views