Russia has repeatedly painted modern Ukraine as a Nazi state, in a crass distortion of history. Putin had already seized Ukraine's Crimean peninsula eight years earlier, after a revolution that ousted Ukraine's pro-Russian president and replaced him with a more pro-Western government.

China has made it pretty clear this week that US President Donald Trump can do whatever he wants with Russia, but he’s not breaking up the Xi Jinping-Vladimir Putin bromance. In a call on Monday, Xi told Putin their relationship isn’t changing,