Russian President V. Putin's explanation for the invasion of Ukraine is by no means new. As many have noticed in recent days, the assertion that the reason for the invasion is the "genocide directed against ethnic Russians in the Donbas" is highly reminiscent of Hitler's strategy for the destruction of democratic Czechoslovakia on the eve of the Second World War. Specifically, Hitler threatened an invasion of Czechoslovakia in order to incorporate the neighbouring country's border regions, which were inhabited by people of German origin and German speakers, into the Reich. Hitler did not even truly need to invade the neighbouring country, as the leaders of Great Britain, Italy and France, remembering well the recent bloodshed of the First World War, agreed to his demands. This agreement took place at the Munich Conference in 1938. Six months later, however, Hitler violated this very agreement by establishing a protectorate in the Czech lands of Moravia and Bohemia, as well as beginning to make claims on Polish territories.

Putin's actions in Ukraine began similarly - the occupation of Crimea in 2014 and the creation of two Kremlin-obedient quasi-states in the Russian-speaking Donbas region.

Just as in the 30s neither Great Britain nor France reacted to the blatant violations of the Treaty of Versailles, so too in the present day has no country acted to make the people of Russia regret, or at least begin to regret, their support for the occupation of Crimea and the Donbas separatists.