columnists for The Guardian and The Daily Telegraph, were accused of apologism for Russia—justifying its actions. According to Isaac Chotiner of the New Republic, Cohen's writing implied that "some sort of control over Ukraine is a requirement of Russian greatness. And then, after explaining this, [Cohen] says the whole crisis was "imposed" on Putin! This is apologetics done well: first you explain why bad behavior is actually sensible, and then you say that the bad behavior wasn't really under the control of the bad actor." Pomerantsev and Weiss said that Cohen was using "willful misinterpretations" of statements by Ukrainian officials. James Kirchick of The Daily Beast described The Nation as "Pravda, in English". Cohen responded to criticism by stating that he sees Washington's hostility towards Russia as counterproductive and dangerous to both Russia and the US: "Before this began, Putin was the best potential partner we had anywhere in the world to pursue our national security", and "American national security still runs through Moscow". Some critics said pro-Russian western media used whataboutism and focused disproportionately on the minority of Euromaidan protestors who belonged to the far-right. The portrayal of the situation in Ukraine as primarily a conflict between the West and Russia, minimizing Ukraine, also received criticism. Julia Ioffe of The New Republic wrote: "Ukraine, you see, is just "a former Soviet republic" and a catalyst for feelings between Russia and the West. It's a thing that can be "smuggled into NATO" because its desire or non-desire to be in NATO is automatically less important than how that "smuggling" would make Russia feel." Some portrayals of Ukrainians were described as "patronizing", reducing Ukrainians to "pawns" of the CIA. Alexander J. Motyl of World Affairs criticized articles by Andranik Migranyan in The National Interest and Katrina vanden Heuvel and Stephen F. Cohen in The Nation, saying that "None of the texts sees Ukrainians as agents with a voice: they are marionettes, following the dictates of Washington. ... Putin and Migranyan probably can't see that this is racism. Vanden Heuvel and Cohen, who rightly rail against racism on the pages of the Nation, should know better." Some commenters criticized Western media who blamed EU and NATO "expansionism" into Russia's "sphere of influence". Anton Shekhovtsov, writing for Searchlight, said Ukrainians were deprived of agency and portrayed as a "mob allegedly manipulated by the West against Russia." Fabio Belafatti, a lecturer at Vilnius University,