NEW DELHI, March 20 -- The most painful side of the Ukraine war is that it is a culture-war. A community is struggling fiercely to preserve its language, culture and identity. It is a fight for its "soul". It is all the more painful because the threat comes from their ethnic cousins, the Russians. All hurt memories come alive.

Unfortunately hurt memories are on both sides. Russians remember the NATO promise to Gorbachev in 1989-90 not to go beyond German unification. But the NATO has long forgotten its promises, enticed many of Russia's ethnic kins into its own network in the name of liberal thinking and free market, and it is aiming at regime-change in Russia itself. On the other side, the Ukrainians remember the period when their land...