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 country’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, who is a handy symbol — is a favorite sport of many. Check out the below. Yuk along, if you’re so disposed.

• Speaking of Elon Musk: “Musk says he stopped Ukraine attack on Russian navy by withholding Starlink internet.” That report is from the AFP. Musk says that a Ukrainian attack would have prompted a nuclear response from Russia. Dmitri Medvedev, the junior Putin, praised Musk for his wisdom.

• Another comment from Medvedev: “Today, Ukraine is facing a choice: to be with Russia or to disappear from the world map forever.” Our nationalists ought to be Ukraine’s biggest defenders and supporters. And yet . . .

• North Korea is pouring troops into Ukraine, to conquer alongside Russia. I often hear that the United States must “pivot to Asia,” where the “real action” is. Oddly, Asia, in the form of North Korea, is “pivoting” to Ukraine.

• Serhii Sternenko, a Ukrainian activist, made an arresting point: Ukraine, by itself, “is forced to face two armies of nuclear powers.”

• At the Reagan Presidential Library, in California, defense secretary Lloyd Austin made remarks about Ukraine. In the course of those remarks, he said he was “confident that President Reagan would have stood on the side of Ukraine, American security, and human freedom.”

• Elaine McCusker was a defense official in the first Trump administration. For Foreign Affairs, she has written an article headed “The Price of Russian Victory.” A Russian victory, she argues, would be costlier to the United States than support of Ukraine now. I am reminded of what Sir Richard Moore, the head of MI6, recently said: “The cost of supporting Ukraine is well-known, but the cost of not doing so would be infinitely higher.”

• Pete Hegseth is of a much different mind. He is set to succeed Austin as our secretary of defense. In his book American Crusade, Hegseth writes, “The defense of Europe is not our problem: been there, done that, twice.” We could have a healthy debate: Is the defense of Europe of interest to the United States? What is not debatable is that the coming of Hegseth and that crew marks a major change.

• A headline in the New York Times reads, “With Trump Ascendant, Even Ukraine’s Allies in Congress Rethink Aid.” (Article here.) “Follow the leader” is an instinct in people, or many of them. The consequences are sometimes enormous.

• The Kyiv Independent reports, “NATO secretary-general Mark Rutte warned on Dec. 12 that the alliance is not ready for the threats it will face from Russia in the coming years, urging a shift to a wartime mindset with significantly higher defense spending.”

• The same paper reports, “Friedrich Merz, the leading contender to become Germany’s next chancellor, criticized his country’s arms policy during his visit to Kyiv on Dec. 9, likening it to forcing Ukraine to fight with one hand tied behind its back.” Huh.

• To me, this is the least surprising headline of the season: “A Jan. 6 rioter tried to join the Russian military to fight against Ukraine, feds say.” (The article, from Politico, is here.)

• Evan Gershkovich, the Wall Street Journal correspondent, was a prisoner of the Kremlin for a year and four months. He was released in the swap between Washington and Moscow last summer. He is now back publishing in the Journal: “Tracking Putin’s Most Feared Secret Agency — From Inside a Russian Prison and Beyond.” The subheading of that article is, “The spy unit that arrested a Wall Street Journal reporter is leading the biggest campaign of internal repression since the Stalin era.”

• Some of the bravest people on earth are Russian, just as in Soviet days. I think of the journalist Dmitry Muratov, who shared the Nobel Peace Prize in 2021. (For an article of mine on Muratov and the Nobel, go here.) Meduza, the Russian news organization in exile, tells us the following:

Hours after TASS reported that he had left Russia, former Novaya Gazeta editor-in-chief Dmitry Muratov posted a photo of himself in front of the state media agency’s headquarters in Moscow on Wednesday.

The photo shows Muratov holding a printout of the TASS story on his purported departure.

What a man, Muratov. Lots of people in America regard Vladimir Putin as manly — so tough, as he has his soldiers obliterate Ukrainian civilians. Dmitry Muratov is the real deal.

• “OSCE” stands for “Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe.” It was born of the Helsinki process. In Malta, they have just held a ministerial meeting. Representing Poland was Radek Sikorski, the foreign minister. He objected — strongly — to the presence of a Russian delegation. Listen to him, and watch him, here. I will excerpt:

“Today, Russia respects neither borders nor human rights. There are no free media in Russia. There are no honest elections, and there are more political prisoners there than in the Soviet Union under Leonid Brezhnev, at the time of Helsinki.

“When the Soviet Union collapsed, we encouraged Russia to become a normal democratic nation-state. But they failed. It proved too difficult to emerge from their own political culture. Russia’s rulers chose the path of aggressive, repressive kleptocracy.

“My message to the Russian delegation is the following: We are not taken in by your lies. We know what you’re doing. You’re trying to rebuild the Russian empire, and we will not let you. We will resist you every inch of the way.

“You are successful in destroying Ukraine, but you’re also destroying the future of your own country. Until you stop this brutal war, you shouldn’t be here.”

Long ago, Radek Sikorski was associated with National Review. I am, frankly, proud of that.

• “Peace!” people say. (I once wrote a book — a history of the Nobel Peace Prize — called “Peace, They Say.”) There is nothing peaceful about Russian occupation. Lots of people know this (and lots of people don’t). “My country was occupied for 50 years by the Soviet Union,” said Gabrielius Landsbergis, who until recently was the foreign minister of Lithuania. “Maybe the guns fell silent, but it wasn’t peace. Ukraine, all of it, deserves nothing less than real and lasting peace.”

• Here is Garry Kasparov, the Russian chess champion, and freedom champion:

Every day, Ukraine is teaching the world lessons on values, courage, technology. Not by choice, but for survival, always the most demanding classroom. The debt we owe them is staggering and they must be whole and free.