Russian President Vladimir Putin at the Battle of Stalingrad Museum and Panorama, in Volgograd, Russia, on Feb. 2.MIKHAIL KLIMENTYEV/AFP/Getty Images Ian Buruma is the author, most recently, of The Churchill Complex: The Curse of Being Special, From Winston and FDR to Trump and Brexit. Speaking in Volgograd, formerly known as Stalingrad, Russian President Vladimir Putin recently evoked the horrors of the Second World War to justify his invasion of Ukraine. “Again and again, we have to repel the aggression of the collective West,” he said with a straight face, without mentioning that the United Kingdom and the United States were...