Adam, if we're indicting the Russian people on the basis of their chauvinism, we'd have to apply the same logic to the Ukrainians. Ukraine wasn't an inclusive, liberal society before the war, and it was even moving in the opposite direction.
There were state-imposed attempts to reduce the use of the Russian language, for one thing. Civil servants were mandated to use Ukrainian instead of Russian (
1); laws were passed that restricted teachers from teaching Russian (and other minority languages, like Hungarian and Romanian) in schools (
2). Even if we grant that Russians are a non-indigenous, late addition to a preceding Ukrainian entity — a country that they invaded and colonized during the eighteenth century — and were a fifth column that was more loyal to Russia than to Ukraine, it's still wrong to suppress their culture.
I don't like the Kremlin and don't like this invasion, which, unless an international court says otherwise, seems to me to be a crime against peace (
3) and the root cause of multiple war crimes. I believe that international law should be upheld and that countries which violate it should be punished. And even if we believe (as I do) that Russia was provoked by NATO's overreach into Eastern Europe, nothing justifies retaliation by war.
But by being in Ukraine, by propping up one form of chauvinism against another, we have to at least acknowledge that the West is taking sides in a civil war between different ethnic nationalisms (and now, with the continuing rise of far-right groups like the AZOV battalion, there is even less hope for a Ukraine that tolerates ethnic heterogeneity).
As for those people who believe that Ukraine has the right to choose its foreign policy, the right to full autonomy, and the right to self-determination, in the most absolute terms and irrespective of any tectonic geopolitical fallout: Why not extend the same sympathy to the Russian-speaking separatist republics in the Donbass?
But none of this is guaranteed.
Sanctions haven't destroyed Russia's economy so far, which seems to be reindustrializing via import substitution. Economic sanctions haven't stopped Russian trade with other emerging countries (many of which have their own skepticism towards the United States). And Russia has so far succeeded in trading in local currencies.
The Russian army, which hasn't performed as well as the Russian MoD had hoped, and which apparently isn't strong enough to offer an existential threat to NATO, has shown that it can still capture 20% of a NATO-backed country (an area the size of England). And, once this war is over, whether or not it loses, its army will have gained massive experience and a direction for reform.
Unless we're prepared to occupy or destroy it, Russia still has the potential to threaten Ukraine again. Russia recovered and reformed after its defeat during the Crimean war. Under Joseph Stalin, it had fully recovered (within a generation) from an even worse military defeat and a civil war.
Countries recover from defeat. They don't recover from humiliation. Only diplomacy offers a permanent solution.