Although the situation appears to have somewhat stabilized in recent days, it is now evident that Ukraine can no longer consider the United States an ally. Russia, on the other hand, now has grounds to hope that the new U.S. administration will not hesitate to sacrifice Ukraine and may even pressure it to make President Volodymyr Zelensky more compliant. From Kyiv’s perspective, this trajectory of American foreign policy appears particularly dramatic. However, the United States seems committed to souring relations with all its former partners and completely reshaping the architecture of international relations.

In this context, the position of geographically distant countries that are not directly involved in the Russia-Ukraine conflict becomes particularly intriguing.

In recent years, Ukrainian diplomacy has sought to communicate the reality of full-scale Russian aggression to the world using the language typically associated with describing imperialist wars. Reasonably assuming that the justice of resisting a colonizer should be self-evident to the global majority, Kyiv insisted on this explanatory framework. Objectively speaking, there were more than enough arguments to support this approach—from the history of Moscow’s conquest of Ukraine three and a half centuries ago to the Kremlin regime’s present-day destruction of Ukrainian identity in occupied territories. A significant portion of the world has, at some point in its history, experienced similar colonial trauma and struggles for independence, meaning Ukraine’s call for solidarity should not have gone unheard.

However, the results were not particularly convincing. The Ukrainian anti-colonial narrative found understanding mainly in Eastern Europe, where nations have shared similar historical experiences—first navigating survival between the Ottoman, Austro-Hungarian, and Russian Empires, and later between the Third Reich and the Soviet Union. Beyond this region, Ukraine’s appeal to anti-colonial solidarity was met with significant skepticism.

This was partly due to Kyiv’s limited resources. Ukrainian public diplomacy simply lacked the capacity to influence global public opinion on a massive scale, as it had no realistic way to reach the necessary audiences. The scale of the task far exceeded Ukraine’s means. Moreover, countering Russia’s well-funded, multilingual, and high-quality propaganda machine was an uphill battle.

However, propaganda is only effective when it aligns with what the audience is predisposed to believe. The Kremlin’s messaging, echoed by numerous local politicians, journalists, bloggers, and opinion leaders worldwide, claimed that the war was not between Russia and Ukraine really but between Russia and the West. Vladimir Putin repeatedly asserted that Ukraine was an artificial construct, created solely to harm Russia. Notably, the ease with which the Kremlin dictator denied the very subjectivity of Europe’s largest country was entirely typical of a metropole’s attitude toward its colony. Yet, the fact that Russia behaved like a textbook empire toward Ukraine mattered less than the narrative it successfully crafted—a confrontation with the West.

People naturally simplify the complexities of the world to make sense of them. When trying to determine who is right or wrong in a distant and confusing conflict, individuals often rely on perceptions of alliances and hostilities in the broader geopolitical landscape rather than an objective assessment of culpability, as would be the case in a courtroom. Personal choices about which side deserves support are frequently based on emotional sympathies and antipathies rather than rational analysis. In making these choices, people tend to operate within stark dichotomies—much like an air defense system identifying “friend” or “foe.”

For most nations with a history of colonial oppression, their experience is primarily associated with Western powers. Historical imperialism, in its true sense, emerged in Europe after the so-called “Great Geographical Discoveries” and reached its peak before World War I. Over the past century, neo-imperialist economic exploitation and global political dominance—often through coercion—have been primarily associated with the United States.

These historical realities of the 20^th century were further compounded by the Soviet Union’s use of anti-colonial rhetoric to fuel its revolutionary agenda. During the Cold War, Moscow’s struggle against the global capitalist system helped it cultivate an image as an ally to national liberation movements worldwide. The fact that the Soviet Union itself was the largest contiguous empire—subjugating a vast array of peoples from Eastern Europe to Central Asia—often went unnoticed by anti-colonial activists. Similarly, many today turn a blind eye to the predatory imperial nature of China. In much of the so-called “Global South,” colonialism is still primarily associated with the West.

As a result, Ukraine, receiving support from Europe and America, faced immense difficulty in appealing for anti-imperialist solidarity across other parts of the world. Meanwhile, the Kremlin, positioning itself as the vanguard of the global struggle against Western hegemony, became the unexpected beneficiary of the worldwide anti-colonial movement.

President Trump’s unapologetically cynical approach has significantly altered the previous perception of the Russia-Ukraine war. It can no longer be framed as an anti-Russian conflict waged by proxy forces when Moscow and Washington are cooperating to force Kyiv into capitulation. Yet, the Ukrainian people continue their determined struggle for survival, displaying precisely the kind of agency that the Kremlin dictator and those who echo Russian propaganda seek to deny.

The eccentric style of the new White House occupant only underscores what should have been understood regardless of the name behind the Oval Office desk: anti-colonial solidarity should not serve as a tool for anti-Western forces. The era of the East India Company is long gone. Modern empires extend their tentacles across the globe not from London or Amsterdam, but from entirely different power centers. To accurately determine who truly deserves recognition and support, we must abandon simplistic binary oppositions.

Vyacheslav Likhachev is an expert at the Center for Civil Liberties, a human rights organization that won the 2022 Nobel Peace Prize. ‌

Vyacheslav Likhachev

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