The Ukrainian Side Explained:
It’s impossible to be with God and invade a country at the same time.
Russians keep singing that “the Donbas conflict has been going on for 8 years,” but can’t escape reality. Before Putin’s actions in 2022, Russian soldiers were not dying in the thousands and Ukrainian drone strikes in Moscow were unheard of; how exactly is Putin keeping Russia safe?
Mothers are crying and sons are dying, but Russian men in suits can’t stop yapping about NATO expansion. Finland, which only joined NATO after 2022, shares an 830 mile border with Russia — end of that argument.
Fine — turn a blind eye to the innocent civilian deaths, but at least cry for your own soldiers. The last time Russia announced casualties was in 2022, acknowledging 5,397 deaths. Between Kyiv and the Pentagon, anywhere from 600,000 to 800,000 Russians have died.
Yes, Ukraine definitely has Nazis, but so does Russia! Nazi is the worst word to use against a country with a Jewish president who lost family to the Holocaust. Nazism is a global cancer, not a Ukrainian one; that’s how evil works.
Let’s say Putin is right about Ukrainian land having Russian roots — so what? The whole world would collapse if we gave legitimacy to historical borders — forget about Europe.
Ukrainians remember the Holodomor, a man-made famine engineered by Stalin’s government that killed millions of Ukrainians. Even in the 1600s, Russian Tsars censored and banned the Ukrainian; you cannot censor something that does not exist. The strength of Ukrainian resistance is deep-rooted.
Let’s assume that Putin is correct about anti-Russian discrimination in Ukraine. Russia is the largest country on Earth; why can’t Russia simply relocate the Russians being discriminated against? Isn’t that better than thousands of people dead, and thousands more as refugees?
In Vietnam, even trained American soldiers ended up raping, mutilating, and killing children. Imagine below freezing conditions lacking basic equipment and training. While Putin stalls negotiations, thousands of Russian prisoners are being drafted. When you send men to hell, then they reflect it, like at the Bucha massacre.
People can see the truth. The truth is that it’s not possible for Russian occupied regions to hold fair elections during war — soldiers looking at you vote. The truth is that thousands of Russians paid smugglers to illegally cross over the US-Mexico border; Americans would never fly thousands of miles and pay smugglers thousands to get into Russia. The truth is that Ukrainian journalists and opposition members can criticize their president; doing the same in Russia causes “suspicious” death.
The ultimate truth is that life is precious — Putin’s actions have needlessly deprived so many of it.
The Russian Side Explained:
This isn’t preschool — there’s no such thing as good or bad in geopolitics.
If “democracy” mattered, America wouldn’t be allies with Saudi Arabia.
The Americans say that Russia started it, but wouldn't the war have ended immediately without American and Western support for Ukraine? Four years into fighting, shouldn't America take some responsibility?
Saddam Hussein was 100% a brutal dictator, but his regime was 100% heaven compared to Iraq after American intervention. It’s never “good vs. bad” when America is the one bombing.
The last time America sent a bunch of money to resistance fighters, we created Al Qaeda. Russia is not perfect, but even in 2015 Ukraine was ranked as the most corrupt country in Europe. Every Eastern Slav knows that Ukrainian roads were the worst in the region even before the war began.
You cannot distinguish Ukrainians and Russians by blood. Ukrainian, Russian, and Belarusian languages all developed out of one language spoken in Kievan Rus, not diverging until after the Mongols invaded — it’s the same language spoken in the Russian and Ukrainian orthodox church today.
This inherent connection is why Russia has the most Ukrainian refugees.
My great grandfather Ivan Scherbina, a WWII hero, exemplifies how complicated this is: His family was from Poltava, Ukraine and was resettled to Bashkiria, Russia — where they continued living among Ukrainians. He supported Stalin, married a Russian, but settled in Belarus — until his death, he sang Ukrainian folk song Ridna Maty Moya with all of his soul.
The Russian perspective is that Ukrainian soil is laced with centuries of Russian history. Ukrainian cities like Severodonetsk were built from scratch by the Soviets. Western eyes see destroyed Ukrainian cities, but Russia just sees a bunch of blown up Soviet infrastructure. Ukraine is right next to Russia; America can’t even accept China in Panama.
Ukrainian cities Odessa, Kherson, Nikolayev, Dnipro, Sevastopol, and Mariupol were all founded by Empress of Russia Catherine the Great. To Russia, America was founded two hours ago.
The word Ukraine literally means “at the edge” or “the borderland” in both Russian and Ukrainian — you would be mentally affected if your government was fighting for “the edge” of the kingdom.
Ukrainians maintain that Stalin was genocidal — but Ukraine wasn't the only Soviet location to have man-made famines. Starvation killed millions in Russia and Kazakhstan because of forced collectivization. Stalin was not kind to Russians at all — and he was ethnically Georgian on top of that.
Without Stalin, Hitler would never be crushed. Yet now, European nations are removing Soviet WWII memorials because of politics. You can’t erase history, just like you can’t erase Kiev welcoming Nazis with “Heill Hitler” banners in 1941.
While Soviet monuments about victory over Hitler are being removed, Russian gas imports to the EU are rising. Western companies left Russia, but Russian oil stays with the West — where is the logic?
The Soviet Collapse and the crime and poverty that followed, explains why Russians are distrustful of the west; in their minds, they already gave America a chance, and it failed them.
We now have Chinese and North Korean soldiers in Ukraine, and Iran giving Russia missiles. We already collapsed Russia, and now they’re back with scary besties.
From the beginning, western media made us believe that Ukraine is winning — are we so sure about that?
Leo Glasgow '26 is an Opinion Columnist and a student in the College of Arts & Sciences. The Government and China & Asia-Pacific Studies double major writes his truth about domestic and international policy as well as problems within the soul of our nation and the world. He can be reached at lglasgow@cornellsun.com
