Even If Ukrainians Were “Russians with Funny Accents”, Russia’s Invasion Would Still Be Unjustifiable

Shared language, culture, or ancestry has never conferred a right to rule by force. Yet states pursuing imperial projects have repeatedly relied on this claim. Nazi Germany justified the Anschluss by asserting that Germans and Austrians constituted a single political community, and later used the presence of ethnic Germans to delegitimize Czechoslovakia’s sovereignty. In the 1990s, Serbian nationalist leaders argued that Serbs could not legitimately live outside a single Serb state, treating republican borders within Yugoslavia as mere lines on a map rather than as expressions of the political choices of its constituent republics. Imperial Japan advanced a similar logic in Korea, portraying Koreans as culturally inseparable from Japan and therefore unqualified for independent statehood. In each case, claims of shared identity were used not to respect popular will, but to override it.

By the “one people” logic, borders across the world would collapse overnight. Canada could be absorbed by the United States.  Austrians could be absorbed by Germany.  Switzerland could be divided among Italy, France, and Germany. The logic is not confined to Europe; applied consistently, it would destabilize many regions where borders do not align neatly with ethnicity, including much of postcolonial Africa. The idea of “one people” is not just dangerous; it is incompatible with an international order built on sovereign equality and consent rather than conquest.

Most importantly, identity does not cancel consent. Even if Ukrainians were culturally indistinguishable from Russians, they would still retain the right to self-government. In modern international politics, legitimacy flows from consent, not from claimed kinship or cultural proximity. Families cannot impose themselves on other families because they share ancestors. Countries do not lose sovereignty because outsiders claim a shared identity. Furthermore, given how hard it is to define “people”, the scope for abuse and aggression is huge. 

The “one people” argument ignores a basic political reality: Ukrainians—whatever language they speak—have repeatedly demonstrated that they want to live in a different kind of state than Russia is. One with competitive elections, pluralism, and the ability to choose alliances freely. That choice, expressed through elections, mass protests, and polling over decades, is what the invasion seeks to crush. Empires routinely dismiss such preferences as confusion or manipulation; history shows they are expressions of agency.

Reducing Ukrainians to “Russians with funny accents” is not just an attempt to erase a distinct identity. It is also a denial of agency, reframing conquest as “liberation” and resistance as confusion. History shows that such arguments consistently function to normalize coercion while stripping people of the right to decide how they are governed.

Russia’s invasion is wrong not just because Ukrainians are different from Russians (as they certainly are). It is wrong because no people—similar or not—can be legitimately ruled at gunpoint. Accepting such arguments would unravel the principle that political authority derives from consent, not claimed kinship.