Six months after Zelenskyy’s historic humiliation in the Oval Office, Trump’s meeting with Putin hopefully signals an end of the Russia-Ukraine war. From a moral point of view, this is to be welcomed, as the war—from both sides—has been morally illegitimate from the outset.
A Morally Justified War Must Be Proportionate
The central framework for evaluating the morality of war is the so-called just war theory—an ancient tradition shaped by various philosophers. Within it, a fundamental requirement for starting and continuing a war is proportionality. Generally, this means the evils caused must stand in due proportion to the evils prevented. American philosopher Jeff McMahan differentiated this idea with his distinction between narrow and wide proportionality. Simply put, while narrow proportionality concerns the appropriate harms inflicted on aggressors (e.g., Russian soldiers), wide proportionality deals with harms inflicted on innocents (e.g., Ukrainian and Russian civilians).
More specifically, narrow proportionality concerns harm to those who are liable to be harmed—meaning they have, to some extent, forfeited their right against harm, and thus would not be wronged by being harmed to that degree. A harm is deemed proportionate in this sense if it corresponds to the forfeiture of the right against harm, and disproportionate if it exceeds it. A common way to determine such forfeiture is to ask whether the individuals harmed could legitimately complain or claim an apology or compensation. If they could do neither, it seems that no injustice has been done. Following this reasoning, deadly defense against a cold-blooded knife attacker might be judged proportionate, since he appears to have forfeited his right to life. After all, he could hardly complain or demand compensation if the victim used deadly force to fend off his unjust attack.
Wide proportionality concerns the proportionate harm to those who have not forfeited their right against harm and would therefore be wronged—the innocent. Their rights violation is generally justified as the lesser evil, with the greater evil invoked in justification having to significantly outweigh the lesser one. A classic example is the trolley dilemma: a runaway trolley is heading toward five people, who could be saved by throwing a switch to divert it onto another track with only one person on it. To most, killing the one person to save the five seems legitimate and the comparatively lesser evil. If unjust harm to innocents can be justified in this way, it is considered proportionate in the wide sense; otherwise, it is deemed disproportionate and unjustified.
“To the Last Man”—Why Ukraine’s War is Disproportionate
The reasons for Russia’s invasion are contested. Some point to Putin’s imperial ambitions and fear of Ukrainian democracy, others to NATO’s expansion. Still, there is broad agreement: Russia’s invasion is not only a violation of international law but also of morality. Waging war in the absence of a prior or imminent attack is reprehensible from every perspective. Participating Russian soldiers who threaten innocent lives can neither complain about being harmed nor demand compensation or an apology. Since they are therefore not wronged, their killing is proportionate in the narrow sense and, in principle, also morally legitimate as a means of warding off the threat.
The problem of Ukraine’s war is not the harming of Russian invaders, but the harming of innocents by the Ukrainian state—that is, wide proportionality. These innocents include, not only the over 7,000 civilians in Russian-occupied areas of Ukraine presumably injured or killed by Ukrainian bombing attacks, but especially the many men forcibly recruited and held trapped. Since the war’s beginning, men between the ages of 18 and 60 have not only been prevented from fleeing the country but have increasingly been seized from their families and sent to the front—where they are highly likely to be killed or wounded. “A woman screamed for the army to spare her husband from conscription. A soldier slapped her and took her husband,” reported US journalist Manny Marotta, describing one of the forced mobilizations at the war’s outbreak. His account stands pars pro toto for the broader problem of the widespread unwillingness to fight and die for the Ukrainian state. According to former presidential adviser, Oleksiy Arestovych, half of Ukrainian men have refused to submit their data to recruitment centers. Over half a million men of military age have fled to the EU—and thousands more have been caught while trying to escape.
While initially there were still volunteers, their numbers have dwindled to zero. “There are no more volunteers,” complained military police officer Roman Boguslavskyi to Der Spiegel in November 2023. To avoid running into people like Roman, Ukrainians use Telegram channels to warn each other. The Kyiv-based group—Kyiv Povestka—alone now has close to 250,000 members. However, dodging the recruiters does not always work: the internet is flooded with videos showing military officers grabbing men off the street and trying to force them into minibuses like cattle. Accordingly, the term coined for this practice—“busification”—was named Ukraine’s Word of the Year in 2024. The cutesy term, however, should not obscure the repressive reality. In her 2024 essay Mobilisation, Ukrainian writer Yevgenia Belorusets reveals the world behind the videos—a world in which women hide their husbands and a brutal state no longer spares even those suffering from cancer or HIV. Ukrainians are thus not only victims of Russia, but also of their own state. Or, to quote the Ukrainian doctor Semyon from Belorusets’s essay: “We are in a situation we never imagined. We are devouring ourselves. Shelled by Russia, at war with Russia, and now at war with those who have decided we must question nothing.”
How should the actions of the Ukrainian state be judged morally? Unless the civilians harmed by Ukrainian bombing have consented, the state is wronging them—no differently than someone who injures or kills bystanders while fending off a mugger in the street. The same applies to the forcibly conscripted men: anyone who sees and hears how they are hunted down and torn from their loved ones should intuitively judge the state’s actions as a violation of their moral rights—and those of their families. After all, such conduct would be regarded in virtually any other context as an injustice requiring justification.
If I were attacked in my home and abducted you to defend me at risk to your life, I would be committing a moral wrong, both against you and your loved ones. Consistently, the actions of the Ukrainian state should be judged in the same way. It treats human beings as material to be used and consumed—a clear violation of their dignity and rights. The possible counterargument of a “duty to fight” seems unconvincing given the risk involved. According to reports by the Financial Times, Ukrainian commanders estimate that between 50 and 70 percent of new frontline soldiers are killed or wounded within just a few days. Yet we are normally not required to take significant personal risks to save others. If you could save my life by playing Russian roulette, doing so would be noble—but not your duty. To compel you anyway would still be a rights violation.
As explained, rights violations can be justified as the lesser evil. Accordingly, one might argue that, to protect Ukrainians, some may be sacrificed. But to be consistent, we would have to accept the same reasoning in comparable situations, which is intuitively questionable. Imagine 1,000 people on an island, facing subjugation by a new ruler. Would the current ruler then be morally permitted to prevent a third of them from fleeing and to forcibly conscript them to fight and die? If this strikes us as morally disturbing, then the actions of the Ukrainian state should be seen in the same light. This is even more true given doubtful chances of success and possible negotiated alternatives. Forcing people into a hopeless and avoidable war seems even more morally troubling than forced conscription itself.
However, the Ukrainian war suffers from a more fundamental problem. Zelenskyy declared—both before and during the war—his intention to fight “to the last man” and “whatever the cost,” thereby rejecting proportionality itself. The Ukrainian state acts like someone who deliberately diverts a runaway train onto a track without caring how many people are on it. On this premise, all Ukrainians—and potentially humanity—become fair game to be sacrificed for Ukraine’s cause. Such conduct, which explicitly denies proportionality, can hardly be considered proportionate and morally justified. Under Zelenskyy, Ukraine has waged a war that has been morally unbounded from the start, with no regard for any losses.
It would therefore be right to end this war. Two morally illegitimate wars should be brought to a close—Russia’s war under Putin and Ukraine’s war under Zelenskyy.
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