States do face real threats and evil can sometimes only be checked by force. But the lesson is clear: war is a profoundly blunt instrument for creating justice, reconciliation or lasting order.

Between 1933 and 1938, hundreds of Ukraine’s brightest minds were executed, imprisoned, or forced into silence. The regime targeted the very idea of Ukrainian identity.

Stalin, determined to eliminate Ukrainian nationalism and any threat of separatism, resolved to break the will of the Ukrainian people, not with guns, but with hunger.

In war, the first casualty is truth. Nowhere is this more evident than in the long and brutal campaign waged by Moscow — not only against Ukraine’s sovereignty but against its very identity.