A totally unjustified, viciously insulting off-topic attack on Greenwald shows the soundness of your judgment here.

But still, he told me that he wanted to be very clear about something: “What happened is a blatant, illegal invasion. I’m tired of hearing how Ukraine’s freedom from Russia is a U.S. intelligence operation, and how helping Ukraine to defend itself is bad,” he said. “To my friends in America, please remember that the Russian oppression of Ukraine is a much longer story than the existence of your entire country. Even as a libertarian, you’re supposed to defend other peoples’ right to defend themselves. This understanding has been lost.”


“I know a lot of libertarians in Ukraine and Russia,” Naumenko continued, “and they ALL oppose the invasion and don’t make apologetic arguments. They think supporting Ukraine is good. The Russian libertarians even support providing Ukraine with weapons. They know what Putin is.” One can be a dogmatic libertarian, or an anarcho-capitalist, he said, but this only works if your country isn’t at risk. To paraphrase Mike Tyson, “Everyone has an ideology until they get punched in the mouth.”

The surprisingly common angle in the Bitcoin community that the war isn’t Putin’s fault is important to address. For the purposes of this essay, a short overview of Ukraine’s history will be helpful, to establish the fact that Ukraine has been in the process of statebuilding — and resisting foreign attacks, invasions and occupations — for nearly 1,000 years. This reality is encased in the country’s national anthem, which begins with the words: “Ukraine has not yet perished.”