Ukraine’s targets in Russia are fully justified | Letters

Strikes on oil refineries and energy facilities are not ‘morale bombing’, says Tim Dee-McCullough, while Dr Natalie Kopytko says such attacks save lives in Ukraine and Nathan Gabriel Wood decries a ‘false moral equivalency’ drawn between Russia and Ukraine

Prof Christian Enemark’s letter (‘Morale’ bombing Moscow is not justified, 25 June) articulates a position of admirable moral consistency, but one that risks being fatally disconnected from the strategic and moral realities that Ukraine faces.

The professor rests his argument on a bright-line distinction between combatants and civilians – a distinction that has genuine force in international humanitarian law, but which becomes considerably more complicated when Russian civilians fund, staff and politically sustain a war machine that has systematically targeted Ukrainian hospitals, schools, apartment blocks and energy infrastructure.