Sauce for the goose.

Lastly, the NATO powers have lately relied on their bogus legal doctrine of “responsibility to protect” that they invented after the fact to try to justify their aggression against Yugoslavia. No such doctrine exists in international law but they claim the right to use it nevertheless. It applies, according to them, when a military action is justified, though illegal, “for legitimate humanitarian reasons.’ They were warned that this false doctrine could be turned against them. Russia has not referred to it at all, but if NATO can rely on it for their wars of aggression, then surely Russia can rely on it to justify their military action to defend the Donbass, and themselves.^[1]

I despise the responsibility to protect doctrine devised at the Fletcher School of Lore and Diplomacy on spring break sometime back in the '90s. Ok, maybe it wasn't Fletcher but the "doctrine" is an obvious end run around the inconvenient requirement of getting the U.N. Security Council to authorize the use of military force against a sovereign nation. And when the U.S. wants to indulge in a little expediency and war crime action, what exactly is the problem? Are we not exceptional?

So here we have the Russians, who do pay attention, applying the R2P magic de facto and, voila, problem solved. As the above indicates the Russians haven't played that card explicitly but look for it if what issues from the mouth of Blinken and Nuland starts to get too deep.^[2]

Notes
^[1] "International Criminal Lawyer on 'The Legality of War'." By Christopher Black, New Eastern Outlook, 3/17/22 (emphasis added). H/t: Eva K. Bartlett.
^[2] I don't think the notion of self defense, preemptive or otherwise, is inapplicable here. Preparations for an attack include certain people creeping up on you militarily, those people training, equipping, and funding a hostile state on your border, and that hostile state killing -- and preparing to kill -- your kinsmen who happen to be in an area separated from Russia by arbitrary or whimsical actions by one man. Said hostile state is separately liable for agreeing to be a part of the overall plan. Israel cries imminent attack if an Iranian troop so much as scratches his nose and as a matter of routine attacks "Iranian" targets in Syria. The world doesn't say boo about such an expansive notion of self defense by either Israel so I hardly see why Russia can't avail itself of an identical argument in far less fanciful circumstances.