You’ve heard the propaganda: Mother Russia had to protect Russian-speakers in Ukraine’s east, oppressed by the Nazis of Kyiv. In reality, no one has suffered worse than the Ukrainians in the east.

“The Wasteland: Shocking New Images from Russian-Occupied Maryinka.” This comes from RFE/RL (our combination of Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty). “New photos from inside the ruins of Maryinka in eastern Ukraine’s Donetsk region show the city reduced to an uninhabitable wilderness.”

I think of the Roman phrase (variously translated and adapted): “They make a desert and call it ‘peace.’”

• Boris Johnson, the ex–prime minister of the United Kingdom, in an interview:

“. . . when I listen to Putin talking about Russian-language speakers in parts of Ukraine, the need to take over that country, I hear the voice of Hitler. It’s exactly the same argument. And be in no doubt that if he were to succeed in Ukraine, that country would be turned into a vassal state of Russia. It would cease to have any democratic independence, and around the world it would look like the West had been defeated, it was the extinction of democracy.”

• Ukrainians never wished to be heroic — who would? — but they are. Their heroism is plain to all who would look. Joseph Roche is a Franco-Belgian reporter in Ukraine. For The Dispatch, he wrote about a volunteer unit in Bucha. The unit is almost all-female. These women take turns defending their airspace against Iranian drones, launched against them by Russia ceaselessly.

It is extraordinary to read about these Ukrainians, and what they go through, and why they persist.

• Did you see Roman Kashaev smiling and smirking and laughing? See this beauty here. He was representing his country, Russia, on the U.N. Security Council. A Ukrainian official, Daria Zarivna, was recounting some of Russia’s atrocities. For instance, Yevhenia Bazylevych and her three daughters were killed in a drone-and-missile strike in September. They lived in Lviv. The mother was 43 and her daughters were 21, 18, and 7: Yaryna, Daria, and Emilia.

Kashaev thought it was simply hi-larious. (Do you think he’d be a hit on American cable?)

• To mock Ukrainians — especially the........

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