For the second time this decade, Russian troops have entered the tiny southern republic of Chechnya.
Fighter planes have bombed villages, destroyed homes, and in at least one instance, murdered 40 refugees as they tried to flee their homes.
"We were all civilians," said one of the survivors, Zina Kardayeva, 42. "We hung out a white flag ... suddenly we were hit from behind.
"When people started to arrive to help, they bombed more ... There was blood everywhere."
The death toll stands at 500 and will rise higher in the coming days and weeks.
The last war in Chechnya cost the lives of 6,500 Russian conscripts, and tens of thousands of Chechen civilians.
Yet somehow, this time around, the war has the support of Canada's foreign affairs minister, Lloyd Axworthy.
The Russians face "very active cells of extreme Muslim agitators who are being supported from the outside," he told reporters. "That kind of terrorism that's being wreaked also has to be met pretty forcefully."
What nonsense. When Russia went to war from 1994 to 1996, there was no pretext of Muslim extremists.
Everyone knows that the only reason Russia cares about Chechnya and its neighbouring republic of Dagestan, is because of their proximity to the Caspian sea and its vast oil reserves.
Axworthy's support for Russian imperialism in Chechnya puts a lie to his new found doctrine of human rights imperialism.
"The sovereignty of states ... is neither absolute nor is it a shield behind which the most egregious violations of human rights and fundamental freedoms can be protected."
Axworthy is here voicing a trend that is gaining support in government and academic circles.
The deputy editor of the influential New York based World Policy Journal calls the new doctrine "liberal imperialism." Rieff argues that Western occupation of Bosnia, Kosovo and now East Timor should be a model.
This "tantamount to calling for a recolonization of part of the world," but "may be the best we are going to do."
His battle cry is "one, two, many Kosovos."
So the new liberal imperialism means poisoning a country with depleted uranium, bombing convoys of civilian refugees, and mining the countryside with cluster bombs that will kill and maim for years.
Apparently it also now means supporting Russia's war for oil in Chechnya.
Liberal imperialism looks a lot like old-fashioned, bloody, western imperialism.