SIR - Amongst the recent T&A letters correspondents we seem to have had some apologists for the Russian invasion of the Ukraine.

Despite the claim by Alec Suchi, NATO has neither invaded Syria nor Libya, and action against Iraq and Afghanistan were action against known terrorist bases. NATO has not expanded eastwards but has rightly accepted as members some eastern European countries who fear the very circumstances we now see in the Ukraine.

Remember Hungary in 1956, Czechoslovakia in 1968, Georgia in 2008 and Crimea in 2014.

Russians have had centuries of corruption, misrule and exploitation by their own people; from the Czar through the Bolsheviks, the Soviets and now the autocrat Putin. They just intuitively roll over and accept the unremittingly jaded and paranoid propaganda dished out by state-controlled media - otherwise it’s the gulag for them.

Neither side is communist; both sides are capitalist, this war is not about political philosophy, it is purely expansionist.

Whilst the UK spent a large part of the 20th century dismantling the British Empire, the so-called Russian Federation is using the 21st century to rebuild its own.

Denis Spence, Mitchell Close, Idle