Domagoj Vida, a starter for Croatia’s World Cup soccer team, after Croatia beat Russia to make it into the Cup finals, posted a collection of videos in which he said “glory to Ukraine.”

Then he apologized.

I know I made a mistake and I would like to apologize again to Russian people.

I’m sorry. That’s life. You have to learn from your mistakes[.]

FIFA, which runs the World Cup, issued a warning (which has implications concerning Vida’s ability to play the next several games after an additional warning, should one be issued) to Vida because with those videos, he’d violated a FIFA rule regarding maintaining political neutrality.

And that gets to my problem with Vida’s apology.

Apologize to FIFA, sure—he broke their rule.

Apologize to Russia?  No, that was wrong.  Russia has no business partitioning and occupying Ukraine.