Last night, Russia launched another massive drone and missile attack on Ukraine.
They struck the Kyiv Lavra complex – one of Christendom’s holiest sites and a spiritual center for centuries. They hit the Arsenal cultural exhibition center and targeted one of the capital’s main postal hubs, severing a vital artery of civilian life. Oleksandr Dovzhenko National Film Studios in Kyiv, one of Ukraine’s oldest film studios, was also damaged, and its costume collection destroyed.
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This morning, after a sleepless night of endless explosions, Ukrainians emerged from their shelters to see images of shattered domes, burning civilian buildings, and broken glass glittering in pools of blood.
Vladimir Putin has again shown us exactly who he is, what his regime stands for, and what this war is truly about.
This war is not about NATO expansion, security guarantees, or spheres of influence – not any of the comfortable lies that apologists in Western capitals whisper to themselves when the moral clarity becomes too uncomfortable.
First and foremost, this war is about annihilation. The annihilation of Ukraine as a nation, a culture, and a people who have the audacity to exist.
Last night’s strikes proved it yet again.
The Kyiv Lavra – not a military base but a monastery. The Arsenal – not a weapons depot but a cultural shrine. The Dovzhenko Film Studios, another cultural landmark. The postal hub – not a command center but a transit hub through which people mail letters and parcels to their families.
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These are not military installations. These are the physical embodiments of Ukrainian identity and civilian life – and that is precisely why Putin’s forces destroy them with such methodical cruelty.
Russia is trying to erase Ukraine from existence, to make the very concept of "Ukrainian" disappear from the face of the earth.
This is the Russian soul laid bare. Not the soul of Tolstoy or Tchaikovsky that Russia’s defenders in the West love to invoke, but the dark, savage soul that has animated Russian imperialism for centuries: the conviction that neighboring peoples have no right to their own existence, no claim to their own history, no legitimacy in their own sovereignty.
Putin has said it explicitly, in writing, for anyone willing to read: Ukrainians are not a real nation. Ukrainian culture is a fiction. Ukrainian statehood is an accident of history to be corrected by “mighty” Russia.
When Russia bombs a church or museum in Kyiv, Kharkiv, Odesa, Lviv, Chernihiv, or elsewhere, it is not collateral damage. A point is being made.
When Russian forces shelled a theater in Mariupol with “CHILDREN” written in letters visible from the sky, it was not a mistake. It was a message.
When Russian soldiers torture civilians in occupied territories, kidnap Ukrainian children and ship them to Russia for “re-education,” systematically erase Ukrainian language and culture in occupied zones – this is not the unfortunate excess of war. This is the essence of the war.
The closing down of a Ukrainian library and cultural center in the center of Moscow, the suppression of organizations representing the large Ukrainian national minority in Russia, was simply the preamble.
Call it by its name: genocide – as defined by international law – the deliberate destruction of a national, ethnic, or cultural group.
Russia is trying to erase Ukraine from existence, to make the very concept of “Ukrainian” disappear from the face of the earth.
The world has seen this before. The world said, “Never again.” The world built institutions and signed treaties and made solemn promises. And now the world watches as Russia commits genocide in real time, broadcast live, documented in excruciating detail.
Every Ukrainian who dies defending their homeland is defending the principle that free peoples have the right to remain free.
It should also hear the blind hatred and criminal extremism of Russian propagandists telling the Russian public day after day on Russian TV and radio that the Ukrainians should be exterminated and Western cities hit by nuclear missiles.
And still some Western voices counsel “restraint,” still some politicians worry about “escalation,” still some intellectuals pen essays about the “complexity” of the situation.
There is no complexity.
A democratic European nation is fighting for its survival against a fascist empire that denies its right to exist and conducts itself as if inspired by the onslaught of the Mongol hordes of the 13th century.
So, make no mistake – this is not only Ukraine’s fight. Russia’s war against Ukraine is inseparable from Russia’s war against the West, against liberal democracy, against the entire post-1945 order built on the principle that peoples have the right to self-determination.
Putin is explicit about this, too. He sees the West as decadent, weak, unworthy of its power. He sees democracy as a sham and human rights as a joke. He believes that might makes right, that the strong should dominate the weak, that empires should rule, and that nations should submit.
Ukraine stands in the way of that vision.
Ukraine, which chose democracy over autocracy, Europe over subjugation, freedom over the prison that Russia has become. Ukraine’s very existence – as a sovereign, democratic, European nation – is an intolerable rebuke to everything Putin’s regime stands for.
That is why he cannot tolerate it. That is why he will not stop until he is stopped.
Every Ukrainian who dies defending their homeland is defending the principle that free peoples have the right to remain free. Every city that refuses to surrender protects not just Ukrainian sovereignty but the idea that sovereignty matters. Every act of resistance declares that the future will not belong to tyrants.
Ukraine is not asking the West to fight its war. Ukraine's soldiers are doing the dying.
If Ukraine falls, the international order that has prevented great power wars for 80 years collapses with it. Putin will not stop at Ukraine’s borders – the pattern is clear from Georgia, from Crimea, from his explicit statements about the “artificial” nature of the Baltic states.
Ukraine is not asking the West to fight its war. Ukraine’s soldiers are doing the dying. Ukraine is asking for the tools to defend itself, for the weapons to strike back, for the support to win. Not to survive – to win. Because anything less than Ukrainian victory is a victory for genocide, for imperialism, for the principle that might makes right, and the strong can devour the weak with impunity.
The rubble in Kyiv’s streets speaks a clear language.
It says, “This is what Russia does to people who refuse to submit.”
It says, “This is what awaits any nation that stands in the way of Russian imperialism.” That Russia does not respect the values and culture of others.
It says, “If Ukraine falls, you are next.”
The choice is between a world where free nations can defend themselves and a world where tyrants rule by terror. Ukraine has made its choice, paid for it in blood, and will not surrender.
The rubble is still smoking. The dead are still being counted. And Russia is already preparing the next attack.
The time for wavering, for half-measures, for comfortable illusions is over.
Ukraine is fighting for its life. It is also fighting for yours. Have no illusions, and do what is necessary.
The views expressed in this opinion article are the author’s and not necessarily of Kyiv Post.
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