title: The Contradictions in Vladimir Putin's "Just War" against Ukraine: The Myths of NATO’s Containment, Minority Protection and Denazification
abstract: Since Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Putin has mobilized different arguments to justify his bellicose stance, mainly the pursuit of NATO containment, the protection of ethnic Russians and Russian-speaking minorities, and the "denazification" of Ukraine. In this article I analyze the contradictions and inconsistencies in these three arguments. Firstly, I show that, although Russian elites had legitimate considerations to contest NATO enlargement during the post-Cold War