Feel strongly about these letters, or any other aspects of the news? Share your views by emailing us your Letter to the Editor at letters@scmp.com or filling in this Google form . Submissions should not exceed 400 words, and must include your full name and address, plus a phone number for verification. Nato and the United States are morally right to stand with and fortify Ukraine. Although Ukraine is a former Soviet state, the process of self-determination has made it independent, with the sovereign authority to choose its security arrangements, including an alliance with Nato. Russian President Vladimir Putin isn’t correct or sophisticated politically or geopolitically to demand that Nato be off limits to Ukraine whose aspirations lean towards the European Union rather than Russia. Russia first annexed Crimea by force and now has its eye on the eastern territories of Ukraine. If Putin had any common sense, he should have accepted the dissolution of the USSR as a fait accompli and focused on rebuilding Russia’s economy. Had he done so, Nato and European security matters would have been academic. It isn’t as if there isn’t enough land in Russia for development. Gerald Heng Snr, Washington Russians won’t sacrifice the necessary for the superfluous In Moscow’s GUM luxury department store, Western brands are being replaced by locally produced ones, including even our once-defunct camera producer Zenit. No doubt the pandemic and anti-Russian economic sanctions have greatly contributed to the phenomenon but that’s hardly the only reason. In Pushkin’s 1834 story The Queen of Spades the protagonist explains that he is not gambling as he is “not in the position to sacrifice the necessary in the hope of winning the superfluous”. That Russian trait makes us immune to sanctions , and we even still fly in an aircraft, the Antonov An-2, which was in production from 1947 to 2001. There has been news that we will replace the veteran biplane with an equally Spartan LMS-901 monoplane by Baikal Engineering. So I may one day fly in it but instead of my old film Zenit bought when I graduated St Petersburg University in 1986, I will take a digital one bought in that department store by Red Square. Mergen Mongush, Moscow