The invasion of Ukraine, and our reaction to it, reveals a central contradiction about the West, says Janan Ganesh in the Financial Times. Our enemies see us as both an “all-powerful oppressor” and a “decadent pushover”, foisting our values on other cultures while at the same time failing to stand up for our own way of life in “a fog of post-Christian self-doubt”. There is truth in both these views, though each is a “hopeless exaggeration”. But of the two it is the first – that the West is domineering – which has been borne out by events.

Social media is awash with scenes of heavily armed Russians being pushed back by unarmed, protesting Ukrainians. To make sense of why, says Politico’s Zoya Sheftalovich in a Twitter thread, you have to understand the mentality of the Russian soldiers. In the run up to the invasion, Kremlin media channels were blasting the message “wall-to-wall” that Vladimir Putin’s troops would be welcomed by ordinary Ukrainians, just as the Soviets were when they “liberated European nations from the Nazis”. The Soviet troops who fought the Nazis are “absolutely deified” in Russia – many of the “young, unhardened” Russian conscripts sincerely expected to be treated similarly in Ukraine. Instead, they were met with Molotov cocktails and berated as оккупанты – “occupiers”.