Here is why Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on 24 February 2022 was actually legal under international law: No one maintains that U.S. President John F. Kennedy lacked international legal authorization to invade the Soviet Union if the Soviet Union were to place American nuclear-warheaded missiles in Cuba 1,131 miles from Washington DC. Everyone recognized that if the Soviet Union and Cuba were to do that, it would constitute an act of aggression against the United States because those missiles would be so close to America’s command center in DC as to enable a blitz nuclear attack by the Soviet Union so fast as to possibly prohibit America’s strategic command to recognize the attack in time to launch its own, retaliatory, missiles.