Although I respect congressional members who have called for restraint and are against any military action, I fear that they have a healthy critique of U.S. imperialism but little understanding or comment about Russia’s own colonial history and present.

When Sen. Bernie Sanders, for instance, argues that Putin has legitimate concerns about NATO, he ignores the fact that the alliance did not grow unilaterally. The dozen or so ex-Warsaw Pact and former Soviet republics that joined did so because of their experience of being forcefully occupied by Soviet forces—and of being victims of Russian imperialism even before that. And from the Holodomor famine in Ukraine to the Soviet’s crushing Hungary 1956 uprising, imperialist atrocities, led by Moscow, were common in the region. Giving Putin’s revisionist history about NATO—as flawed as the alliance is— any credence undercuts the moral fabric of progressive, anti-imperialist talking points in the first place.

Even beyond Europe, Russia’s history, like the United States, is built off the back of settler colonialism. Vast regions, such as Siberia, the Caucasus, and the Arctic, were all colonized during the Russian Empire. Minority peoples were trampled by Russian armies and targeted for genocide by Soviet rule. (Some people calling themselves communists and socialists will try and claim those atrocities never happened: They’re hypocritical apologists for genocide but fortunately relegated to talking nonsense on social media and are without any power to influence policy.)