"In the Western world, we have a system, which in its concept is moral. Formally, every man and every nation have equal rights to prosper. Our system is imperfect because humans run it. By the system’s rules, no one is deprived of the right to prosper. Cases like Chile or Ireland show that some find better ways than others.

In the West, we can find instances of undue political interference. It might be a contract or international treaty in which a stronger party is taking advantage of a weaker side. If discovered, the immorality and potential illegality could be reversed.

Russians, looking at the faults in the West, ask what is wrong with their influencing Ukraine. What Russians ask for is establishing a rule that Ukraine has no right to be fully sovereign. The Russians’ approach is rooted in the Tatar Yoke logic that some political entities have superior rights over others. Russians ask that, due to the imperfections of our moral concept, the West should accept as legal the fundamentally immoral concept that countries neighboring Russia have no equal rights to prosper."

I put the above in the quotation mark because I copied that from my article "Why do most Westerners misunderstand Russia?"