It’s our moral duty to stand up to this deranged 21st century Hitler
RUSSIA’S savage, unprovoked assault on Ukraine is a moment that will live in infamy.A grim new chapter has opened in the pages of European history. As combat aircraft swarm through the skies and tanks roll forward across foreign soil, the continent has been plunged into its darkest crisis since the Second World War, when another deranged tyrant unleashed bloodshed and destruction with his violent mission to conquer.
The freedom of Europe is now under grave threat. If Vladimir Putin succeeds in his attempt to subjugate Ukraine, brute military power will have triumphed over the rights of nationhood and democracy. The shadow of intimidation and autocracy will be permanently cast over the entire region, with the existence of every country in the east, from Poland to Montenegro, under real threat from Putin’s war machine.
That is why Britain and the other nations of Europe have a moral duty to stand up to this despot. Ukraine might be 1,500 miles away, but its survival is essential to the preservation of our liberties.
If we fail to turn back Putin, there can be no meaningful peace in Europe as long as he remains in the Kremlin.
What makes his invasion so shocking is not just its lack of any justification but also its colossal scale. This has been no narrow incursion into disputed territories in the east of Ukraine, as many analysts expected. On the contrary, it has been a full-blown military offensive by land, sea and air, reaching into every part of country with utter indifference to innocence or humanity. The vastness of the operation makes a complete mockery of all the frantic rounds of diplomacy over recent weeks, as a succession of western leaders made desperate attempts to reach a settlement.
But Putin was never interested in a deal, only in the humiliation of the West and the obliteration of Ukraine.
In his unhinged, televised address to the Russian people shortly before he launched the invasion, Putin declared that his aim was to “de-nazify” Ukraine. Not only was this claim specious nonsense but it also contained a chilling irony. The real element of Nazism in this saga is how Putin has slavishly copied Hitler’s playbook in the late 1930s over the dismemberment of Czechoslovakia. Just as Putin has whipped up separatist, pro-Russian movements in the Donbass part of Ukraine, so Hitler fomented pressure for a breakaway by pro-Germans in the Sudetenland as a pretext for continual bullying of the Prague government.
In both cases, the heavy presence of massed armed forces on the border created a climate of menacing blackmail. Similarly, the strikes at multiple targets during this week’s invasion by Russia is a cruel parallel of Hitler’s Blitzkrieg tactics in his attack on Poland in 1939.
Just as there were apologists for Hitler in 1939 who claimed that the Fuhrer had been provoked into war by the harshness of the Versailles peace treaty in 1919, so there are defenders of Putin today in the West who claim that he was pushed into the invasion by Nato’s systematic expansion across eastern Europe. This, they allege, was a deliberate attempt to undermine Russian security. But such special pleading could not be more empty. Nato is a side issue. Putin is really driven by his hatred of Ukraine, which he believes should be part of a revived Russian Empire.
Indeed, in his rambling address to his Security Council on Monday, Putin grandly proclaimed that Ukraine is an “inalienable part of our history, culture and spiritual space”. It is this imperialist ambition that makes him so dangerous.
A former KGB officer, he yearns for the glory days of the mighty Soviet Union, whose collapse in 1989 he regards as “the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century.” But, with even greater intensity, he wants to recreate the rule of Tsars with their untrammelled power over vast swathes of territory. On his desk in his Cabinet room he has a statute of Peter the Great, the 18th century Tsar who dominated European politics.
“He will live as long as his cause is alive,” he says, words that should terrify any of Russia’s neighbours.
THE British Defence Secretary Ben Wallace caused a stir this week when he said that Putin has “gone full tonto” but his verdict was correct. The Russian leader used to be a canny operator, knowing when to hold back on his ambitions, but he is now an unrestrained megalomaniac.
His descent into despotic paranoia has been fuelled by his long, two decades in power, as well as his instinct to surround himself by yes-men and his refusal to engage with alternative sources of information, particularly the internet, which he regards as a tool of the CIA.
More recently, his sense of isolation from
the real world has been compounded by Covid. For a supposed strongman, he is childishly terrified of the virus, and has hidden away for the last two years in a sanitised bubble. Now his detachment from reality means that he seems even willing to contemplate nuclear war if theWest challenges him.
Like a Bond villain, yesterday he warned that if theWest tried to intervene in Ukraine, “you will face consequences greater than any you have faced in history.” Tragically, over the last 20 years, the West has done far too little to confront this monster. On the contrary, we have become dependent on his oil and gas, denuded our own defences and swallowed the woke agenda that has encouraged a spirit of self-loathing across our institutions in place of national pride.
It was telling that a fortnight ago, as the Ukrainian crisis intensified, the British Army was holding a special day to promote social inclusion and cultural diversity among the ranks.That was precisely the sort of ideological self-indulgence that emboldened Putin into thinking the West would not respond to his aggression. But even as the death toll in Ukraine mounts, it is not too late to act. Putin is not nearly as invincible as he might appear now. Indeed, the invasion could be seen as the desperate gamble of a leader whose economy is in decline and whose popularity is dwindling.
There are plenty of reasons to hope that Putin, far from striding on to further conquests, is actually facing his downfall. One is the economic leverage that theWest still possesses. So far the sanctions against his regime, apart from the rejection of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, have been limited, but that means there is huge scope to inflict crippling blows. Russian companies, for instance, could be barred from raising capital on the London, European and American markets.
IN THE same vein, Russian banks could be kicked out of the SWIFT international payments system, while individual oligarchs could be ruthlessly targeted by sanctions and export controls imposed. Alternative sources of metals, energy and minerals could be sought and the Russian government blocked from access to foreign currencies. Just as important should be the drive to turn Russia into an international pariah through cultural boycotts, sporting isolation and diplomatic exclusion.
The West should close its Russian embassies and refuse visas to Russian travellers. Life should be made as impossible for Putin’s cronies as it was for the leaders of the South African apartheid regime.
Nor will Russia’s conquest of Ukraine be easy, despite overwhelming military superiority. Ukraine is a huge country of 233 square miles, the second largest nation in Europe after Russia. Those large distances will make Russia’s supply lines hard to maintain in a guerrilla war led by the Ukrainian resistance.
Moreover, the Ukrainian army is far stronger and better equipped than it was in 2014 when Putin first seized Crimea. In addition to 210,000 active personnel, most adult males have undergone basic military training, while the US has supplied more than £2billion worth of Javelin anti-tank missiles, coastal patrol boats, Humvees and drones. The British Government also provided 2,000 short-range anti-tank missiles, as well as bolstering our military presence in neighbouring Nato states. Indeed, the rich paradox of Putin’s blood-soaked adventurism is that he has unified Nato as never before and concentrated European minds on the need for greater collective defence spending and planning.
Putin’s disdain for Ukraine’s nationhood could not be more wrong. Its people have a fierce sense of patriotism, which will infuse the fight against the invader. In the 1991 independence referendum, no less than 92.3 per cent of the public voted for freedom from the Soviet Union. It is Russia that could soon be in trouble.
As the body bags start to return from Ukraine, support for the war will plummet and anger will focus on Putin. His days could be already numbered.
Ukraine is in the front-line against tyranny. We must stand with their people in their hour of need. The revolutionary Bolshevik Lenin, one of Putin’s predecessors as Russian leader, advised his followers in combat “to probe with bayonets. If you find mush, proceed. If you find steel, withdraw.” There has been too much mush in our dealings with Putin. It is time to show him some steel.
‘If we fail to turn back Putin, there can be no meaningful peace in Europe’