The frightful noise of gunfire, bombing and children’s screams in the cities of Ukraine reverberates across Europe. The full-scale Russian invasion launched last week is an unprovoked, heinous crime perpetrated against Ukraine’s citizens, their sovereign democratic state and all the free peoples of the world. The 24th of February is a day that will live in infamy. It will not be forgiven. It will surely never be forgotten.
Reports so far suggest Russia has failed to gain the swift victory it expected. Fierce street fighting in Kyiv and other cities speaks to the bravery of the country’s soldiers and ordinary Ukrainians determined to defend their land. In the east, the invaders are pinned down. But they are better equipped and armed. They have control in the air. If a thwarted Kremlin orders its forces to step up attacks, a bloodbath of Ukraine’s citizen fighters could ensue.
At this moment of maximum danger, it’s imperative that Vladimir Putin, Russia’s president and sole architect of this needless calamity, implement an immediate ceasefire. Militarily, he has miscalculated. Diplomatically, he is isolated, as the UN security council’s condemnation of Moscow’s actions shows. Even his ally, China, refused to support this vile aggression. Politically, at home, Putin’s war is provoking widespread protests and unrest.
Now is a time for cool heads and wise counsel in western capitals. The longer the fighting continues, the higher will be the number of people killed and maimed, the wider the political gulf and the greater the prospect that this conflict may spill into Poland and other nearby countries. As Nato reinforces its eastern flank and tensions rise across the board, the risk of confrontation between Russia and the western alliance grows.
Help is urgently needed for Ukrainian families who are fleeing westwards in ever growing numbers to escape indiscriminate Russian attacks in civilian areas. Aid agencies predict a large-scale humanitarian and refugee emergency. Poland, Slovakia, Hungary, Moldova and Romania cannot manage this terrible human crisis alone. Britain and all the EU countries must be generous in offering assistance and, hopefully temporary, asylum to Putin’s victims.
The western democracies face a moment of truth. For years, they have watched the worldwide, polarising advance of authoritarianism. If the global order established after 1945 – guaranteeing the sovereign right to national self-determination, the rule of law and basic human rights – is not effectively defended now, then no individual, no people and no state will in future be safe from malign powers. Ukraine is democracy’s frontline.
Grandiose pronouncements about epic watersheds and historic turning points in world affairs are often made and just as often wrong. But for once, this is no exaggeration. Not since Soviet tanks rolled into Prague in 1968 has Europe seen anything like this and not even that grimly remembered horror offers an exact analogy. Not since Hitler has Europe seen the leader of a major country behave in such predatory fashion.
The attempted crushing – in truth, the attempted extinction – of an independent state and its freewheeling, multi-ethnic traditions by the stormtroopers of a delusional dictator inevitably recalls the Nazi era. How extraordinary, how barely believable, that Europe should be thrust back into that dark place. The sense of shock and outrage, not least in Russia, where 20 million people died in the fight against fascism, is palpable.
Fighting for survival
How much greater still must be the bewilderment felt by European generations born after 1989, after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of the cold war. Unlike baby boomers, they did not grow up in the shadow of nuclear Armageddon. How to explain that another aggrieved and angry little man – a contemptible KGB throwback who daily mourns the demise of the Soviet Union – is now threatening them with nuclear annihilation?
In one sense, this moment has been coming ever since Putin cruelly suppressed Chechen separatists, levelling the city of Grozny in 1999-2000 without a thought for its inhabitants. In Georgia, in Syria and in Crimea and the Donbas in 2014, he repeatedly acted with similarly callous brutality and reckless disregard for consequences. His record is that of an international hooligan.
Putin may or may not be crazy. But he is certainly a thug. Force is his only argument. Lies are his ammunition. He appears determined to transform Ukraine into a mere buffer, run by a puppet regime. US reports that the Kremlin has a list of public figures to be jailed or assassinated are credible. If Putin succeeds, he will build an open-air jail with torture chambers akin to benighted Belarus. Ukraine as an idea will cease to exist.
Ukraine’s people, its leaders and its army know they are fighting for survival. So far, they are doing exceptionally well. They have slowed the advance, causing real damage to Russian forces. Stories abound of extraordinary individual courage and sacrifice. All men aged 18 to 60 have been called to arms and they willingly respond. Civilians have queued for guns and mixed molotov cocktails to throw at Russian tanks. The irony will probably be lost on Putin.
All the same, logic and numbers suggest Ukrainians cannot indefinitely resist a significantly stronger enemy. President Volodymyr Zelenskiy is demanding western military assistance while sympathetic Tory MPs propose a no-fly zone over Ukraine patrolled by UK and Nato aircraft. There is also talk of arming a semi-permanent, irregular resistance force. This is all highly problematic. As the UK defence secretary, Ben Wallace, has said, a no-fly zone could lead to Nato clashes with Russian forces and a possible wider war. It is not a workable idea. More broadly, having insisted that Nato would not fight for a non-Nato country, the west has little choice but to stick to that position – even as pressure grows, as it certainly will, to protect Ukraine’s beleaguered people.
Corrupt regime
This situation all but guarantees Putin’s superior forces will prevail in the near term. But that does not necessarily mean the bigger, longer battle is lost. It is not true to say, as Zelenskiy does, that Ukraine stands alone. The outpouring of support for Kyiv around the world is powerful. Putin is execrated on all sides. The US, UK and others are rightly upping the supply of defensive weapons. And then there are sanctions.
The punitive measures imposed on Russia last week by the US, UK, EU and other countries are unprecedented in scope. Moscow has attempted to shrug them off. They will have little immediate impact. But as a concerted, collective exercise designed to isolate, degrade and eventually impoverish Russia’s economy, finances and Putin himself, it has no equal.
That said, more could and should be done. It is wrong to exempt Russia’s oil and gas exports. Energy revenue is the regime’s main source of income. It pays for the wars it wages and the regressive policies it pursues. It keeps Putin in warm socks and luxury yachts. Of course, Europe will itself pay a high price if Russian energy is cut off. But it’s a price that must be paid. It is to be welcomed that Germany appears close to agreeing that Russian banks should be barred from the Swift payments system.
These swingeing sanctions and the UN vote make it official: Putin’s Russia is a pariah state. If maintained and reinforced, as they must be over time, sanctions could help bring down his corrupt regime. Putin, plainly, has over-reached. This war and the limitless political and economic damage it will do to Russia may finally force an overdue reckoning between the Russian people and their oppressive president – and bring to a thankful end the shaming Putin era.
Britain showed a lead in lobbying reluctant Germany and Italy over Swift, just as it has in ensuring defensive weaponry reaches Ukraine’s army. Promises by Boris Johnson and the foreign secretary, Liz Truss, to finally clean up the Russian dirty money laundromat in London, and penalise Putin’s oligarch pals, are welcome, if kept – though questions remain about Tory funding.
The Ukraine crisis has undoubtedly boosted Johnson. The role of international statesman has allowed him to dodge, for now, the mess he’s made at home. It’s heartening, meanwhile, to see Keir Starmer’s Labour back in the mainstream, standing four square behind Nato and vanquishing the pale ghosts of the Corbyn era. Unlike before the Iraq war, western intelligence assessments of Russia’s intentions have proved highly accurate.
It remains the case, however, that post-Brexit Britain is a secondary player. The US president, Joe Biden, says the invasion marks the total rupture of western relations with Russia. This break has serious implications stretching beyond Ukraine to, for example, Taiwan, which fears China may emulate Putin. Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, vulnerable former Soviet republics, and other east European states also worry they may be next – if Putin succeeds.
He must not. It’s possible that the Ukraine crisis will shift the international balance of power and permanently remake the security map of Europe. But that’s a question for the future. Right now, it’s vital, as Johnson says, that Putin fails and be seen to fail. Right now, today, Ukrainians are dying in a vicious war of Russia’s choosing. Putin says he’s ready to talk. That’s a trap. The tyrant must understand: dialogue can only begin when the shooting stops.
• This article was amended on 28 February 2022 because an earlier version said “Soviet tanks rolled into Prague in spring 1968”. In fact the tanks arrived in August 1968 to crush the so-called Prague Spring movement.
