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CHISINAU, Moldova Vova Klever, a young, successful fashion photographer from Ukraines capital, Kyiv, did not see himself in this war.

Violence is not my weapon, he said.

So shortly after Russia invaded Ukraine in late February and Ukraine prohibited men of military age from leaving the country, Mr. Klever sneaked out to London.

His mistake, which would bring devastating consequences, was writing to a friend about it.

The friend and his wife then shared the contents of that conversation on social media. It sparked an online fight that went viral, and Ukrainians all over the internet exploded with anger and resentment.

You are a walking dead person, one Twitter message said. Im going to find you in any corner in the world.

The notion of people especially men leaving war-torn Ukraine for safe and comfortable lives abroad has provoked a moral dilemma among Ukrainians that turns on one of the most elemental decisions humans can make: fight or flee.

Thousands of Ukrainian men of military age have left the country to avoid participating in the war, according to records from regional law enforcement officials and interviews with people inside and outside Ukraine. Smuggling rings in Moldova, and possibly other European countries, have been doing a brisk business. Some people have paid up to $15,000 for a secret night-time ride out of Ukraine, Moldovan officials said.

The draft dodgers are the vast exception. That makes it all the more complicated for them morally, socially and practically. Ukrainian society has been mobilized for war against a much bigger enemy, and countless Ukrainians without military experience have volunteered for the fight. To maximize its forces, the Ukrainian government has taken the extreme step of prohibiting men 18 to 60 from leaving, with few exceptions.

All this has forced many Ukrainian men who dont want to serve into taking illegal routes into Hungary, Moldova and Poland and other neighboring countries. Even among those convinced they fled for the right reasons, some said they felt guilty and ashamed.

I dont think I can be a good soldier right now in this war, said a Ukrainian computer programmer named Volodymyr, who left shortly after the war began and did not want to disclose his last name, fearing repercussions for avoiding military service.

Look at me, Volodymyr said, as he sat in a pub in Warsaw drinking a beer. I wear glasses. I am 46. I dont look like a classic fighter, some Rambo who can fight Russian troops.

He took another sip and stared into his glass.

Yes, I am ashamed, he said. I ran away from this war, and it is probably my crime.

Ukrainian politicians have threatened to put draft dodgers in prison and confiscate their homes. But within Ukrainian society, even as cities continue to be pummeled by Russian bombs, the sentiments are more divided.

A meme recently popped up with the refrain, Do what you can, where you are. Its clearly meant to counter negative feelings toward those who left and assure them they can still contribute to the war effort. And Ukrainian women and children, the vast majority of the refugees, face little backlash.

But thats not the case for young men, and this is what blew up on the young photographer.

In mid-March, Olga Lepina, a modeling agent, said Mr. Klever disclosed in a text message to her husband that he had paid $5,000 to be smuggled out of Ukraine, and from earlier conversations she knew he had wanted to go to London.

Ms. Lepina said she and Mr. Klever had been friends for years. She even went to his wedding. But as the war drew near, she said, Mr. Klever became intensely patriotic and anti-Russian, and said rude things to her husband, who is Russian. When she found out he had avoided service, she was so outraged that she posted on Instagram the comments Mr. Klever made insulting her husband, and said he had spent $5,000 to be smuggled out of Ukraine.

For me, it was a hypocrisy to leave the country and pay money for this, she explained, adding, He needs to be responsible for his words.

Mr. Klever, who is in his 20s, fell deeper into an online spat with Ms. Lepina. She and others said he had made insensitive comments about the town of Bucha, the site of major violence and the town she was from. (The comments were made before the atrocities in Bucha were revealed). Mr. Klever was then bombarded with death threats. Some Ukrainians also resented that he used his wealth to get out and called it cheating.

Responding to emailed questions, Mr. Klever did not deny skipping out on his service and said that he had poor eyesight and had been through a lot lately."

You cant even imagine the hatred, he said.

Mr. Klever gave conflicting accounts of how exactly he exited the country and declined to provide details. But for many other Ukrainian men, Moldova has become the favorite trap door.

Moldova shares a nearly 800-mile border with western Ukraine. And unlike Hungary, Poland, Romania and Slovakia, Moldova is not part of the European Union, which means it has significantly fewer resources to control its frontiers. It is one of Europes poorest countries and has been a hub of human trafficking and organized crime.

Within days of the war erupting, Moldovan officials said, Moldovan gangs posted advertisements on Telegram, a popular messaging service in Eastern Europe, offering to arrange cars, even minibuses, to spirit out draft dodgers.

Law enforcement officials said the typical method was for the smugglers and the Ukrainians to select a rendezvous point along Moldovas green border, the term used for the unfenced border areas, and meet late at night.

On a recent night, a squad of Moldovan border guards trudged across a flat, endless wheat field, their boots sinking in the mud, looking for draft dodgers. There was no border post on the horizon, just the faint lights of a Ukrainian village and the sounds of dogs barking in the darkness.

Out here, one can just walk into and out of Ukraine.

Moldovan officials said that since late February they had broken up more than 20 smuggling rings, including a few well-known criminal enterprises. In turn, they have apprehended 1,091 people crossing the border illegally. Officials said all were Ukrainian men.

Once caught, these men have a choice. If they dont want to be sent back, they can apply for asylum in Moldova, and cannot be deported.

But if they do not apply for asylum, they can be turned over to the Ukrainian authorities, who, Moldovan officials said, have been pressuring them to send the men back. The vast majority of those who entered illegally, around 1,000, have sought asylum, and fewer than 100 have been returned, Moldovan officials said. Two thousand other Ukrainian men who have entered Moldova legally have also applied for asylum.

Volodymyr Danuliv is one of them. He refuses to fight in the war, though its not the prospect of dying that worries him, he said. It is the killing.

I cant shoot Russian people, said Mr. Danuliv, 50.

He explained that his siblings had married Russians and that two of his nephews were serving in the Russian Army in Ukraine.

How can I fight in this war? he asked. I might kill my own family.

Myroslav Hai, an official with Ukraines military reserve, conceded, There are people who evade mobilization, but their share in comparison with volunteers is not so large. Other Ukrainian officials said men ideologically or religiously opposed to war could serve in another way, for example as cooks or drivers.

But none of the more than a dozen men interviewed for this article seemed interested. Mr. Danuliv, a businessman from western Ukraine, said he wanted no part in the war. When asked if he feared being ostracized or shamed, he shook his head.

I didnt kill anyone. Thats whats important to me, he said. I dont care what people say.

What happens when the war ends? How much resentment will surface toward those who left? These are questions Ukrainians, men and women, are beginning to ask.

When Ms. Lepina shamed Mr. Klever, she was no longer in Ukraine herself. She had left, too, for France, with her husband. Every day, she said, she wrestles with guilt.

People are suffering in Ukraine, and I want to be there to help them, to support them, she said. But at the same time Im safe and I want to be here.

Its a very ambiguous, complicated feeling, she said.

And she knows she will be judged.

Of course there will be some people who divide Ukrainian nationals between those who left and those who stayed, she said. I am ready for that.

Siergiej Greczuszkin contributed reporting from Warsaw, and Daria Mychkovska from Przemysl, Poland.

April 10, 2022

An earlier version of this article referred incompletely to the online dispute between Vova Klever and Olga Lupina. In addition to writing a social media post describing Mr. Klevers avoidance of military service in Ukraine, Ms. Lupina also posted comments she considered insensitive that he made about her husbands Russian heritage and about Bucha, her hometown.

Read more:
What Happened on Day 46 of the War in Ukraine - The New York Times

CHERNIHIV, Ukraine (AP) Russian troops retreating from this northern Ukrainian city left behind crushed buildings, streets littered with destroyed cars and residents in dire need of food and other aid images that added fuel to Kyivs calls Thursday for more Western help to halt Moscows next offensive.

Dozens of people lined up to receive bread, diapers and medicine from vans parked outside a shattered school now serving as an aid-distribution point in Chernihiv, which Russian forces besieged for weeks as part of their attempt to sweep south towards the capital before retreating.

The citys streets are lined with shelled homes and apartment buildings with missing roofs or walls. A chalk message on the blackboard in one classroom still reads: Wednesday the 23rd of February class work.

Russia invaded the next day, launching a war that has forced more than 4 million Ukrainians to flee the country, displaced millions more within it and sent shock waves through Europe and beyond.

Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba warned Thursday that despite a recent Russian pullback, the country remains vulnerable, and he pleaded for weapons from NATO to face down the coming offensive in the east. Nations from the alliance agreed to increase their supply of arms, spurred on by reports that Russian forces committed atrocities in areas surrounding the capital.

Western allies also ramped up financial penalties aimed at Moscow, including a ban by the European Union on Russian coal imports and a U.S. move to suspend normal trade relations with Russia.

Kuleba encouraged Western countries to continue bearing down on Russia, suggesting that any letup will result in more suffering for Ukrainians.

How many Buchas have to take place for you to impose sanctions? Kuleba asked reporters, referring to a town near Kyiv where Associated Press journalists counted dozens of bodies, some burned, others apparently shot at close range or with their hands bound. How many children, women, men, have to die innocent lives have to be lost for you to understand that you cannot allow sanctions fatigue, as we cannot allow fighting fatigue?

Ukrainian officials said earlier this week that the bodies of 410 civilians were found in towns around the capital city. Volunteers have spent days collecting the corpses, and more were picked up Thursday in Bucha.

Bucha Mayor Anatoliy Fedoruk said investigators have found at least three sites of mass shootings of civilians during the Russian occupation. Most victims died from gunshots, not from shelling, he said, and corpses with their hands tied were dumped like firewood into recently discovered mass graves, including one at a childrens camp.

The mayor said the count of dead civilians stood at 320 as of Wednesday, but he expected the number to rise as more bodies are found in his city, which once had a population of 50,000. Only 3,700 now remain, he said.

In his nightly address, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy suggested that the horrors of Bucha could just be the beginning. In the northern city of Borodianka, just 30 kilometers northwest of Bucha, Zelenskyy warned of even more casualties, saying there it is much scarier.

The world should brace itself, he said, for what might soon be found in the seaport city of Mariupol, saying that on on every street is what the world saw in Bucha and other towns in the Kyiv region after the departure of the Russian troops. The same cruelty. The same terrible crimes.

He pledged that an international war crimes investigation already underway will identify each of the executioners and all those who committed rape or looting.

Ukrainian and several Western leaders have blamed the massacres on Moscows troops, and the weekly Der Spiegel reported Thursday that Germanys foreign intelligence agency had intercepted radio messages between Russian soldiers discussing the killings of civilians. Russia has falsely claimed that the scenes in Bucha were staged.

Kuleba became emotional while referring to the horrors in the town, telling reporters that they couldnt understand how it feels after seeing pictures from Bucha, talking to people who escaped, knowing that the person you know was raped four days in a row.

His comments came in response to a reporters question about a video allegedly showing Ukrainian soldiers shooting a captured and wounded Russian soldier. He said he had not seen the video and that it would be investigated. He acknowledged that there could be isolated incidents of violations.

The footage has not been independently verified by the AP.

In the 6-week-old war, Russian forces failed to take Ukraines capital quickly, denying what Western countries said was Russian leader Vladimir Putins initial aim of ousting the Ukrainian government. In the wake of that setback and heavy losses, Russia shifted its focus to the Donbas, a mostly Russian-speaking, industrial region in eastern Ukraine where Moscow-backed rebels have been fighting Ukrainian forces for eight years.

The United Nations humanitarian chief told the AP on Thursday that hes not optimistic about securing a cease-fire after meeting with officials in Kyiv and in Moscow this week, underlining the lack of trust the two sides have for one another. He spoke hours after Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov accused Ukraine of backtracking on proposals it had made over Crimea and Ukraines military status.

Its not clear how long it will take withdrawing Russian forces to redeploy, and Ukrainian officials have urged people in the countrys east to leave before the fighting intensifies there.

Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk said Ukrainian and Russian officials agreed to establish civilian evacuation routes Thursday from several areas in the Donbas.

Even as Ukraine braced for a new phase of the war, Russias withdrawal brought some relief to Chernihiv, which lies near Ukraines northern border with Belarus and was cut off for weeks.

Vladimir Tarasovets described nights during the siege when he watched the city on fire and listened to the sound of shelling.

It was very hard, very hard. Every evening there were fires, it was scary to look at the city. In the evening, when it was dark, there was no light, no water, no gas, no amenities at all, he said. How did we go through it? I have no words to describe how we managed.

In addition to spurring NATO countries to send more arms, the revelations about possible war crimes led Western nations to step up sanctions, and the Group of Seven major world powers warned that they will continue strengthening the measures until Russian troops leave Ukraine.

The U.S. Congress voted Thursday to suspend normal trade relations with Russia and ban the importation of its oil, while the European Union approved punishing new steps, including the embargo on coal imports. The U.N. General Assembly, meanwhile, voted to suspend Russia from the world organizations leading human rights body.

U.S. President Joe Biden said the U.N. vote demonstrated how Putins war has made Russia an international pariah. He called the images coming from Bucha horrifying.

The signs of people being raped, tortured, executed in some cases having their bodies desecrated are an outrage to our common humanity, Biden said.

The U.S. State Department said it was blacklisting the United Shipbuilding Corp., Russias largest military shipbuilder, as well as its subsidiaries and board members. The move blocks their access to American financial systems. The department also said it would levy sanctions against the worlds largest diamond mining company, Russia-backed Alrosa.

___

Schreck reported from Kyiv, Ukraine. Associated Press journalists around the world contributed to this report.

___

Follow the APs coverage of the war at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine

Read more:
Russian retreat reveals destruction as Ukraine asks for help - The Associated Press

The attackers may have broken into the electrical companys systems as early as February, Ukrainian officials said, but they emphasized that some details of the attack, including how the intruders made their way into the companys systems, were not yet known.

Officials declined to name the company that suffered the breach and the region its substations are in, citing fears of continuing cyberattacks.

It is self-evident that the aggressors team, the malefactors, had enough time to get prepared very thoroughly and they planned the execution on a sophisticated, high-quality level, said Victor Zhora, the deputy head of Ukraines cybersecurity agency, the State Service of Special Communications and Information Protection. It looks that we have been very lucky that we were able to respond in a timely manner to this cyberattack.

Ukrainian companies in finance, media and energy have been subject to regular cyberattacks since the war began, according to Mr. Zhora. His agency said that since Russias invasion began, it had recorded three times as many attacks as it had tracked in the previous year.

The use of wiper malware has become a persistent problem in Ukraine since the war began, with attacks hitting Ukrainian critical infrastructure, including government agencies responsible for food safety, finance and law enforcement, cybersecurity researchers said.

Hackers have also broken into communications systems, including satellite communication services and telecom companies. Investigations into those breaches are continuing, although cybersecurity analysts and U.S. officials believe Russia is responsible. Other hacking groups, including one affiliated with Belarus, have broken into media companies systems and social media accounts of high-profile military officials, trying to spread disinformation that claimed Ukraine planned to surrender.

They are targeting critical infrastructure; however, these attempts were not so sophisticated as compared to todays recent attack, Mr. Zhora said of the recent hacking campaigns against Ukrainian companies.

Read more:
Ukraine Says It Thwarted a Sophisticated Russian Cyberattack on Its Power Grid - The New York Times

One moment, they were packed onto the platforms at the Kramatorsk train station, hundreds of women, children and old people, heeding the pleas of Ukrainian officials imploring them to flee ahead of a feared Russian onslaught.

The next moment, death rained from the air.

At least 50 people were killed and many more wounded in a missile assault on Friday morning that left bodies and luggage scattered on the ground and turned the Kramatorsk station into the site of another atrocity in the six-week-old war.

There are just children! one woman cried in a video from the aftermath.

The missile struck as officials in Kramatorsk and other cities in eastern Ukraine had been warning civilians to leave before Russian forces mount what is expected to be a major push into the region, where their troops have been regrouping after withdrawing from areas around Kyiv, the capital.

President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine said that Russia had hit the station with what he identified as a Tochka-U short-range ballistic missile as thousands of peaceful Ukrainians were waiting to be evacuated.

Lacking the strength and courage to stand up to us on the battlefield, they are cynically destroying the civilian population, Mr. Zelensky said. This is an evil that has no limits. And if it is not punished, it will never stop.

Russian officials, denying responsibility, said a Ukrainian battalion had fired the missile in what they called a provocation. The Russian Defense Ministry said that Tochka-U missiles are only used by the Ukrainian armed forces and that Russian troops had not made any strikes against Kramatorsk on Friday.

A senior Pentagon official said the United States believed Russian forces had fired the missile. They originally claimed a successful strike and then only retracted it when there were reports of civilian casualties, said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss a confidential intelligence assessment.

The train station was hit as a top European Union delegation was visiting Mr. Zelenskys government, and the images of yet another mass killing provoked new Western outrage.

Whether one or more missiles struck the station was not immediately clear, and there was no way to independently verify the origin of the attack. Several parked cars were also hit, catching fire and turning into charred hulks. The waiting area was strewn with bodies and belongings.

After the strike, the Ukrainian police inspected the remains of a large rocket next to the train station with the words for our children written on it in Russian. It was unclear who had written the message and where the rocket had come from.

The mayor of Kramatorsk, Oleksandr Honcharenko, said 4,000 people had been at the station when it was attacked, the vast majority of them women, children and elderly people. At least two children were among the dead, he said.

The head of the military administration in the region, Pavlo Kyrylenko, said 50 people had been killed, including 12 who died in the hospital. Another 98 were wounded, including 16 children, he said.

After the attack, Kramatorsk officials said they were trying to find cars and buses to evacuate civilians to western areas presumed to be less vulnerable to Russian attacks.

Ukraines railway service said that evacuations would proceed from nearby Sloviansk, where shelters and hospitals have been stocked with food and medicine in anticipation of an imminent Russian offensive.

Western countries, which have been shipping arms to Ukraine and tightening sanctions on Russia to punish President Vladimir V. Putin for the invasion, saw the Kramatorsk slaughter as new justification to intensify their efforts.

The attack on a Ukrainian train station is yet another horrific atrocity committed by Russia, striking civilians who were trying to evacuate and reach safety, President Biden said on Twitter. He vowed to send more weapons to Ukraine and to work with allies to investigate the attack as we document Russias actions and hold them accountable.

President Emmanuel Macron of France called the strike abominable.

Ukrainian civilians are fleeing to escape the worst, he wrote on Twitter. Their weapons? Strollers, stuffed animals, luggage.

The station was hit as the Slovak president, Eduard Heger, and the president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, were traveling to Kyiv in a show of support for Mr. Zelensky and his countrys bid for European Union membership.

Mr. Heger announced that Slovakia had given Ukraine an S-300 air defense system to help defend against Russian missiles and airstrikes.

To make the transfer possible, the Pentagon said it would reposition one Patriot missile system, operated by U.S. service members, to Slovakia. It was the latest buildup in arms and troops along NATOs eastern flank, as the alliance seeks to deter any Russian incursion.

Now is no time for complacency, Mr. Biden said in a statement announcing the Patriot repositioning. As the Russian military repositions for the next phase of this war, I have directed my administration to continue to spare no effort to identify and provide to the Ukrainian military the advanced weapons capabilities it needs to defend its country.

The attack on the railway station came after Russian forces had spent weeks shelling schools, hospitals and apartment buildings in an apparent attempt to pound Ukraine into submission by indiscriminately targeting civilian infrastructure, ignoring Geneva Convention protections that can make such actions war crimes.

Last month, an estimated 300 people were killed in an attack on a theater where hundreds had been sheltering in the battered port of Mariupol, Ukrainian officials said. In recent days, growing evidence has pointed to atrocities in the devastated suburbs of Kyiv, where Ukrainian troops found bodies bound and shot in the head after Russian forces had retreated.

Ms. von der Leyen visited one of those suburbs, Bucha, on Friday before meeting with Mr. Zelensky.

It was important to start my visit in Bucha, she wrote on Twitter. Because in Bucha our humanity was shattered.

Russia has said its troops have been falsely accused and that the evidence against them is fake.

The repercussions of the fighting are spreading far beyond Europe. The United Nations reported on Friday that world food prices rose sharply last month to their highest levels ever, as the invasion sent shock waves through global grain and vegetable oil markets. Russia and Ukraine are important suppliers of the worlds wheat and other grains.

The report of rising prices came as the British government said Russia was heading for its deepest recession since the collapse of the Soviet Union, estimating that the economy could shrink by as much as 15 percent this year.

On Friday, the European Union formally approved its fifth round of sanctions against Moscow, which included a ban on Russian coal and restrictions on Russian banks, oligarchs and Kremlin officials. The coal ban, which will cost Russia about $8.7 billion in annual revenue, takes effect immediately for new contracts. At Germanys insistence, however, existing contracts were given four months to wind down, softening the blow to Russia and Germany alike.

Nevertheless, Prime Minister Boris Johnson of Britain, meeting with the German chancellor, Olaf Scholz, in London on Friday, applauded what Mr. Johnson called the seismic decision by Germany to turn away from Russian fuel. Britain has pushed for a total ban on Russian energy, a move that Germany, which heats half its homes with Russian gas, has resisted.

Mr. Johnson acknowledged the obstacles to transforming Germanys energy system overnight, but said we know that Russias war in Ukraine will not end overnight. Mr. Scholz said Mr. Putin had tried to divide European powers, but he will continue to experience our unity.

On Friday, Russia retaliated for some of the punishments from the West, declaring 45 Polish Embassy and Consulate staff persona non grata, and ordering them to leave Russia. Poland had expelled the same number of Russian diplomats.

Russias Justice Ministry also said it had revoked the registration of several prominent human rights groups in the country, including Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, which have accused Russian troops of committing war crimes in Ukraine. The ministry accused the groups of violating an unspecified Russian law. The decision means the organizations are no longer allowed to operate in Russia.

Human Rights Watch said that forcing its office to close would not change its determination to call out Russias turn to authoritarianism. The group said it had been monitoring abuses in Russia since the Soviet era.

We found ways of documenting human rights abuses then, and we will do so in the future, it said.

Megan Specia reported from Krakow, Poland, and Michael Levenson from New York. Reporting was contributed by Jane Arraf from Lviv, Ukraine, Aurelien Breeden from Paris, Ivan Nechepurenko from Istanbul, Matina Stevis-Gridneff from Brussels, Michael D. Shear and Eric Schmitt from Washington, and Mark Landler and Chris Stanford from London.

Read more:
What Happened on Day 44 of Russias Invasion of Ukraine - The New York Times

On April 12, 1861, rebel artillery opened fire on Fort Sumter, beginning the U.S. Civil War. The war eventually became a catastrophe for the South, which lost more than a fifth of its young men. But why did the secessionists believe they could pull it off?

One reason was they believed themselves to be in possession of a powerful economic weapon. The economy of Britain, the worlds leading power at the time, was deeply dependent on Southern cotton, and they thought a cutoff of that supply would force Britain to intervene on the side of the Confederacy. Indeed, the Civil War initially created a cotton famine that threw thousands of Britons out of work.

In the end, of course, Britain stayed neutral in part because British workers saw the Civil War as a moral crusade against slavery and rallied to the Union cause despite their suffering.

Why recount this old history? Because it has obvious relevance to the Russian invasion of Ukraine. It seems fairly clear that Vladimir Putin saw the reliance of Europe, and Germany in particular, on Russian natural gas the same way slave owners saw Britains reliance on King Cotton: a form of economic dependence that would coerce these nations into enabling his military ambitions.

And he wasnt entirely wrong. Last week I castigated Germany for its unwillingness to make economic sacrifices for the sake of Ukraines freedom. But lets not forget that Germanys response to Ukraines pleas for military aid on the eve of war was also pathetic. Britain and the United States rushed to provide lethal weapons, including hundreds of the anti-tank missiles that were so crucial in repelling Russias attack on Kyiv. Germany offered and dragged its feet on delivering 5,000 helmets.

And its not hard to imagine that if, say, Donald Trump were still president here, Putins bet that international trade would be a force for coercion, not peace, would have been vindicated.

If you think Im trying to help shame Germany into becoming a better defender of democracy, youre right. But Im also trying to make a broader point about the relationship between globalization and war, which isnt as simple as many people have assumed.

There has been a longstanding belief among Western elites that commerce is good for peace, and vice versa. Americas long push for trade liberalization, which began even before World War II, was always in part a political project: Cordell Hull, Franklin Roosevelts secretary of state, firmly believed that lower tariffs and increased international trade would help lay the foundations for peace.

The European Union, too, was both an economic and a political project. Its origins lie in the European Coal and Steel Community, established in 1952 with the explicit goal of making French and German industry so interdependent that there could never be another European war.

And the roots of Germanys current vulnerability go back to the 1960s, when the West German government began pursuing Ostpolitik eastern policy seeking to normalize relations, including economic relations, with the Soviet Union, in the hope that growing integration with the West would strengthen civil society and move the East toward democracy. Russian gas began flowing to Germany in 1973.

So does trade promote peace and freedom? Surely it does in some cases. In other cases, however, authoritarian rulers more concerned with power than with prosperity may see economic integration with other nations as a license for bad behavior, assuming that democracies with a strong financial stake in their regimes will turn a blind eye to their abuses of power.

Im not talking just about Russia. The European Union has stood by for years while Viktor Orban of Hungary has systematically dismantled liberal democracy. How much of this weakness can be explained by the large Hungarian investments that European, and especially German, companies have made while pursuing cost-cutting outsourcing?

And then theres the really big question: China. Does Xi Jinping see Chinas close integration with the world economy as a reason to avoid adventurous policies such as invading Taiwan or as a reason to expect a weak-kneed Western response? Nobody knows.

Now, Im not suggesting a return to protectionism. I am suggesting that national-security concerns about trade real concerns, not farcical versions like Trumps invocation of national security to impose tariffs on Canadian aluminum need to be taken more seriously than I, among others, used to believe.

More immediately, however, law-abiding nations need to show that they wont be deterred from defending freedom. Autocrats may believe that financial exposure to their authoritarian regimes will make democracies afraid to stand up for their values. We need to prove them wrong.

And what that means in practice is both that Europe must move quickly to cut off imports of Russian oil and gas and that the West needs to supply Ukraine with the weapons it needs, not just to hold Putin at bay, but to win a clear-cut victory. The stakes here are much bigger than Ukraine alone.

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Opinion | Putin, Ukraine and the Illusion That Trade Brings Peace - The New York Times