Russia has repeatedly painted modern Ukraine as a Nazi state, in a crass distortion of history. Putin had already seized Ukraine's Crimean peninsula eight years earlier, after a revolution that ousted Ukraine's pro-Russian president and replaced him with a more pro-Western government.

We know how Russian President Vladimir Putin thinks about Ukraine. In speeches and written manifestos, Putin has rejected the legitimacy of his neighbor’s sovereignty and even its distinct identity. He sees Ukraine as part of a greater Russian nation,