Ten Years of the Russo-Ukrainian War — Why Putin Must Be Defeated

It has been two years since Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine. And it’s been approximately ten years since Russia annexed Crimea with a subsequent war in eastern Ukraine, in the Donbas.

As a result, many in the West (for simplification's sake, let’s say that this classification primarily includes NATO members rather than the Global North) are starting to feel pressing fatigue.

Whether it’s from the pandemic, inflation, rising housing costs, threatened supply chains, the Israel-Hamas war in the Middle East, North Korea’s endless threats to annihilate its southern neighbors, China’s threats on Taiwan, and more, people have a lot they are focused on and are understandably generally fatigued about the state of the world.

With all of that, we must remember that the message the West is sending with its support for Ukraine is not that they want to terminate Russia’s existence as a state. Instead, the message is to other autocratic leaders that they cannot impose territorial concessions on sovereign nations without suffering severe repercussions.

With the scale of disinformation and misinformation in the world, we must not lose this guiding principle.

The liberal international order has already failed. It failed before Russia’s full-scale invasion. We must not let it fail again.

So, I thought that in this post I would once again establish what is at stake. We must…