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the hated West is intolerable for Putin. He’s explained at great length why he believes Ukraine has no legitimacy as an independent nation, and his model of a neo-tsarism where elections are fake and opposition leaders die in Arctic prisons would be threatened by a Ukraine that successfully embraced a version of the Western model.

Give Putin this — at least he’s defending what he considers his civilizational birthright of despotism and illiberalism. Any true friend of our own should be appalled.

Rich Lowry is editor of the National Review.

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