‘Putin won’t honour any peace deal with Ukraine – he must be beaten on the battlefield’
GONE BUT NOT FORGOTTEN: Tributes to Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, who many believe was murdered on Putin’s orders. Picture by Nikita Pishchugin
The Accidental Diplomat, a column by Paul Knott
The West is currently failing Ukraine and that must change
When I was sent by the Foreign Office to work at the British Embassy in Moscow in 2006, I knew Russia was a country with different views to Britain’s.
At first, I thought we would be able to work most of these differences out, as sensible countries usually do. Unfortunately, this turned out to be too optimistic. By the time I left Russia three years later, I was convinced we were going to have trouble with the Putin regime.
Over the years since, this concern has been proven correct. In fact, the danger from Putin’s dictatorship is now worse than I ever expected. By this point, I am worried Russia will soon start a wider war and that my young adult kids could be called up to fight in it.
That might sound like scaremongering and I certainly hope I am wrong. But our history shows us we have been here before.
In the years after the First World War, most people thought no-one would ever be crazy enough to start another disastrous and deadly conflict. Then along came Hitler and the Nazis to start World War Two and “never again” became “yet again”, with over 50 million people being killed worldwide.
Now, for the first time since the end of the Second World War, Britain and Europe are threatened by a bitter, twisted and violently power-crazed dictator – Vladimir Putin. We must not make the same mistake of underestimating this dictator’s aggressive intentions.
It is easy to understand how we get this wrong. Like I did in my early days at the Embassy in Moscow, we assume that today’s Russia has a normal government made up of normal politicians, albeit some very ruthless ones.
In reality, Putin and his cronies are more like a mafia gang formed by rogue KGB secret policemen, who have managed to take control of a big, powerful country and its huge economic wealth. Understanding this is crucial to understanding why Putin behaves as he does and how to stop him.
As with an organised crime boss, Putin knows he cannot afford to lose power. Unlike a democratic politician, he cannot retire quietly to a nice house in the country. Given all of the crimes he has committed and the vast amounts of money he has stolen from the Russian people, losing power would almost certainly end up with Putin being thrown into jail or killed by a rival.
This fear drives Putin to eliminate anyone who challenges him. As a criminal thug, that often means murdering them, as we have seen yet again recently with the killing of Alexei Navalny, an opponent who bravely and brilliantly exposed Putin’s corruption.
DANGER: ‘The consequences of allowing Putin to win in Ukraine are horrifying’
The same motivation largely explains Russia’s brutal invasion of Ukraine. Ignore all the nonsense that the Putin regime throws out about ancient history and the imaginary “threats” from NATO it invents to create a smokescreen. What really scared Putin was the Ukrainian people rising up in 2014 to throw out their mob-connected and Kremlin puppet President, Viktor Yanukovych.
Putin fears Ukraine’s success in creating a free, democratic and cleanly run country. He sees this as setting a dangerous example that the Russian people next door might follow, which he must crush before the same thing happens to him.
The fact that Putin’s actions are driven more by his personal interests than an insane ideology like Nazism does make him different to Hitler in that sense. But like the former Führer, he has a deep grudge against the other Western countries who oppose him. This fury combines with his arrogant sense of superiority and extreme hunger for power to mean that he is very likely to attack other countries if he is allowed to succeed in Ukraine.
This mindset Putin has in common with Hitler and the lifetime he has spent lying mean that appeasement is unlikely to work with him either.
Putin thinks everyone else is as cynical and dishonest as he is, which has led him to break pretty much every deal he has ever made. He would almost certainly use any peace agreement with Ukraine to buy time to strengthen his armed forces before attacking again, unless we put something in place to stop him.
Ultimately, Putin has the mentality of a vicious bully who can only be stopped by showing strength, sticking together and standing up to him.
Fortunately for us, Ukraine is the biggest difference from the last time such a dictator threatened us all. Then, in the early years of World War Two, the Nazis were able to sweep across most of Europe before it became possible for Britain and the Allies to turn the tide.
Now, we have a courageous country, Ukraine, that is willing and able to stop Putin’s thugs before they get any further. Our only job is to supply them with everything they need to do that.
Worryingly, this is a task we are currently failing at. We have to change this urgently because the likely consequences of allowing Putin to win are horrifying.
The Ukrainian Foreign Minister, Dmytro Kuleba, rightly said recently, “every mile the Russians advance in Ukraine is a mile closer they are getting to you, your towns and your families”.
And as the famous anti-Fascist Spanish Civil War poster from the 1930s correctly predicted: “If You Tolerate This, Then Your Children Will Be Next”. This time we really should listen and act accordingly.