The West has decided that the narrative for the war in Ukraine following Russia's invasion is "Kyiv Good, Moscow Bad," regardless of what the real situation is and why President Vladimir Putin launched an attack in the first place.

Putin has said he wants to rid his western neighbor of Nazis, and we know that Nazis exist in Ukraine because an entire military unit – the Azov Battalion – is rife with neo-Nazis. He also has said that Ukraine moving more toward NATO and the West is a national security issue for him and Russia – just like it would be for the U.S. if Mexico was attempting to move into a Russian or Chinese-led security alliance. And he spent the better part of the 2000s attempting to move closer to the West and its institutions, only to be rebuffed and see former Soviet satellite nations move into NATO.

Putin isn't "crazy" and he's not a "madman" – he has legitimate concerns about the safety and security of his country.

By the same token, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is no saint, either. Before the war, his country was seen as one of the most corrupt in Europe – and after all, let's not forget that a major Ukrainian energy company paid Hunter Biden, a lawyer with no energy company experience, millions of dollars to sit on its board of directors (so that they could cozy up to Joe Biden, the then vice president who just conveniently became president a few short years later).