Allen J. Davis and Tom Weiner are right to criticize NATO expansion [“Stop double standard; tell truth about Ukraine,” Gazette, June 29]. I’ve done the same, in articles going back to 1996. But they make a mistake to link NATO expansion to the Russian invasion of Ukraine. In 2013-2014, Vladimir Putin was concerned not with Ukraine’s membership in NATO, which wasn’t on the table at that time despite what Davis and Weiner write, but about Ukraine’s closer relationship with the European Union. They make other errors in their column.The Euromaidan protests were an authentic civic uprising by Ukrainians, not a “covert” operation by the United States to depose Viktor Yanukovych. Putin wasn’t “provoked” into invading Ukraine any more than the United States was “provoked” into invading Iraq.

In 2022, when he launched an all-out invasion of the country, Putin wanted to expand the “Russian world” and expand his country’s effective borders. That’s not a defensive action but an offensive imperialism. A ceasefire at this moment would legitimize Russia’s land grab, which was in clear violation of international law. This war is indeed causing suffering. But we should be calling on Russia to end its bombing of Ukrainian cities and its occupation of Ukrainian land. We should be calling for an investigation into war crimes, committed disproportionately by Russian troops and the Russian government. By all means, we must call for peace. But above all it must be a just peace.

John Feffer

Northampton

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