Despite the fact that Russia is a country with conservative leadership that enforces “traditional values,” it’s difficult to wrap one’s head around the fact that America’s far-right seems to feel admiration and affection for its ruler, Vladimir Putin.

Putin is the head of a corrupt faux-democracy over which he exercises dictatorial authority. His country is commonly referred to as a kleptocracy, because Putin enriches himself from the public till and has created a coterie of oligarchs who grovel before their benefactor and obey his every whim. So, while our country’s far-right politicos yammer on endlessly about Americans’ loss of freedom and the oppression of big government, they lionize an autocrat who allows no political freedom whatsoever in his country, controls the media, lies to his people, imprisons those who protest against his policies, rigs elections and poisons his critics and political enemies.

Even Putin’s invasion of Ukraine — and the resultant death, suffering and displacement of millions of its citizens — seems not to have dimmed the luster of Putin’s persona for the far-right. I recently read an op-ed piece by a local self-described conservative who sought to “understand” Putin’s motives for that invasion. What he meant by “understand” was “find justification for,“ since he wished to make the invasion appear to be, if not totally justified, at least a consequence of rational grievances.

This pundit wishes us to believe, for example, that Putin is correct in classifying the 2014 unseating of Ukraine’s President Viktor Yanukovich as a “coup” that was somehow “fostered” by NATO, and hence retaliation against Ukraine was justified.

The facts suggest otherwise. In late 2013, Yanukovich refused to sign a political association and free trade agreement with the European Union, an agreement that the Ukrainian people and their parliament overwhelmingly favored. He instead decided to ally the country more closely with Russia and the Eurasian Economic Union, as he was ordered to do by Putin, who had cut off energy supplies to Ukraine and blocked Russian imports from the country, all with the aim of preventing it from forging ties to the west.

Popular protests erupted, not only because of this refusal to follow the people’s will, but also because Yanukovich had long disregarded human rights and was notoriously corrupt (he owned a giant mansion on the outskirts of Kyiv with a private zoo, an underground shooting range, tennis courts, a bowling alley and an 18-hole golf course). The protests continued into 2014, when suppression of them grew deadly — over a hundred protesters were killed, largely by sniper fire — and finally, in February, Yanukovich was forced out of office and immediately fled to Russia.

Our columnist also alleges that Yanukovich’s successor, Arseniy Yatsenuk, was “hand-picked” by NATO, though he offers no evidence of that. Yatsenuk was, at the time, a distinguished and respected Ukrainian politician, and he served as an interim prime minister for only a month and a half until the next election took place. (NATO, I should note, is a bug-a-boo for this writer, just as it has been for Putin for many years. Over and over again, Putin has accused it of threatening, encroaching upon and endangering Russian territory. NATO now has a web page to respond to these charges. See https://www.nato.int/cps/en/natohq/topics_111767.htm.)

Another Putin-announced motive for the invasion was his desire to “de-Nazify” Ukraine. Our local Putin-sympathizer takes that quite seriously. But isn’t it absurd to argue that, if one country harbors neo-Nazis, another country is entitled, without invitation, to invade it in order to eliminate them? Even if Putin doesn’t acknowledge that Ukraine is a real country, the rest of the world does, and borders must be respected.

Furthermore, even though it is true that the Ukrainian Svoboda party has had some anti-Semitic, neo-Nazi members, it’s also true that the leader of that party, in 2004, tried to expel neo-Nazi and neo-fascist members. In any case, the Svoboda party today has no real influence in parliament, though it still exists as a typical far-right, ultra-nationalistic, protectionist party that opposes immigration. globalism and free trade. Come to think of it, it closely resembles the Trump-wing of the Republican Party. Perhaps we could persuade Canada to invade the U.S. and rid us of those reprehensible Republicans.

Our local right-winger also chooses to raise the old issue of Hunter Biden and the Ukrainian energy company Burisma, asserting that there were “kickbacks to the Biden family.” But there is no evidence of any such kickbacks, and U.S. intelligence has reported that Russian intelligence created the entire affair in order to help Donald Trump in the 2016 election.

Putin’s actual motives for invading Ukraine are pretty clear and are typical of what motivates the autocrats that Ruth Ben-Ghiat discusses in her book, “Strongmen: Mussolini to the Present.” Putin doesn’t distinguish between himself and the state that he rules. He assumes that whatever serves his interests is good for his country. He is intent upon sustaining his assumed role as the strong, resolute and virile savior of his country. The great historical wrong that he promises to rectify is the breakup of the Soviet Union, which he has called “the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the 20th century.” One of his aims, therefore, is to reclaim territory lost in that “catastrophe,” and thereby to restore Russia’s prestige as a world power, with him as its glorious leader. Like most dictators, he finds it useful to dwell upon his country’s supposed enemies, especially NATO, which he insists will do anything to frustrate his efforts to make his country great again.

Needless to say, none of Putin’s real motives justify his massive, unprovoked and brutal assault on the people of Ukraine. Nor are his goals being achieved. Instead of regaining status by this invasion, Putin has become a pariah, even for many of his own citizens. Perhaps Trump will soon feel the need to revise his opinion that Putin is a “genius,” and the far-right will come to see Putin for what he is: a conscienceless, corrupt dictator whose crimes relegate him to the pantheon of infamous Russian rulers, right alongside Stalin.

Leonard Hitchcock of Pocatello is an alumnus of the University of Iowa and did graduate work at Claremont Graduate University and the University of California, San Diego. He taught philosophy in California and Arizona for 15 years. In 1985, after earning a library degree, he was hired by Idaho State University. He retired from ISU’s Oboler Library in 2006.