My aunt cried inconsolably when Mr. Putin announced his invasion in February to “liberate” the Donbas from Ukraine’s so-called neo-Nazi regime. She never asked him to be liberated, she told me tearfully then in phone calls; she just wanted to live peacefully in her country. But when the invasion started and I urged her to leave, she was resolute: They’d stayed this long, she said, what was the point of leaving now? Already in their 70s, my aunt and uncle couldn’t see themselves restarting their lives somewhere new. For me, an immigrant to the United States who was born in...