Michelle Obama once urged that when others go low, we go high. During these Trump years, some dismiss the phrase as naïve. Yet the principle remains sound: we do not abandon our values because an opponent has abandoned theirs. Dignity is not merely ornamental; it is part of how a nation wins, and part of why it deserves to.
Ukraine, under President Volodymyr Zelensky, has lived that principle with remarkable discipline. Russia has waged its war with a brutality that recalls some of the darkest chapters of twentieth-century warfare—abducting children, bombing civilian infrastructure, and prosecuting a ground war many believed Europe would never see again. It has been a campaign marked by cruelty as much as by strategy.
Ukraine has largely avoided responding in kind. Rather than conducting indiscriminate attacks on Russian cities, its military has focused primarily on Russian soldiers and assets that sustain the war effort. As Ukraine found its footing, its drone campaign did not become an eye-for-an-eye campaign. Instead, it remained directed at oil facilities, logistics hubs, military infrastructure, and other economic arteries. The goal was not terror but disruption—to weaken Russia’s capacity to wage war and to inconvenience its citizens rather than to harm them.
This restraint is not merely tactical, though Ukraine has every reason to avoid escalation against a far larger adversary. Nor is it solely diplomatic, though Kyiv has long been mindful of maintaining Western support. It is also moral. Ukraine has sought to fight while preserving its values, even when Russia has discarded its own. It has chosen, as much as war allows, to go high.
And, thus far, that choice has strengthened rather than weakened Ukraine’s cause. It has reinforced the contrast between aggressor and defender, helped sustain international support, and reminded the world that even in war, restraint can be a source of strength. History remembers not only who prevailed, but how they fought. Ukraine appears determined that, whatever the outcome, it will not become what it is resisting.