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At least 18 people have been killed in another Russian drone and missile swarm attack on Ukraine. The offices of the European Union and the British Council were struck, along with a five-storey block of flats destroyed in Kyiv. Lots and lots of outrage. So what?
Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the EU Commission, threatened more sanctions on Russia. Sir Keir Starmer said that “Putin is killing children and civilians and sabotaging hope of peace”.
That’s a statement of the obvious – but not the statement of a statesman.
For most of the last 80 years, British prime ministers have not had to sell real “blood sweat toil and tears” to Joe Public. Joe has had it pretty easy. A few daft wars of choice and medal winning opportunities for soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan made Brits feel mawkish pride. The Falklands puffed out Britannia’s right to rule – and no one can even remember the UK’s involvement in Korea.
But the latest Russian set of attacks and Donald Trump’s ongoing support for Vladimir Putin, are proof, as if it were needed, that Europe’s leaders must prepare their nations for a long fight, increased taxation, and inflation as a result of increased fossil fuel prices.
They must accept that the good times so lavishly enjoyed by Boomers and Gen X are over.
This is because Trump, for reasons that will obsess historians for generations, behaves as though he is working for the Kremlin. The American security blanket that coddled Europe was snatched away at the start of the new Trump administration. And we’re only six months into it.
In Alaska, Trump kow-towed to Putin. He fawned over a visiting dictator, who is wanted by the International Criminal Court for war crimes in Ukraine. Then Europe’s leaders indulged the US president in delicate toddler management, cooing and praising him for fear that he’ll throw his toys out of their cot and waddle off into Uncle Vlad’s lap.
Their problem is that Trump is already there. The launch of more than 600 drones and 31 missiles at Ukraine won’t sway his loyalty, let alone the deaths of 15 people.
He has accepted Putin’s claim, established by war and invasion, on much of eastern Ukraine. He has ignored the fact that the main victims of Putin’s invasion have been the very Russian-speaking people he claimed to come to save. At least 8,000 civilians were killed by Russia in Mariupol – 90 per cent of residents spoke Russian there as a first language.
Putin has shifted the debate away from how to beat him out of Ukraine to how to accommodate Russia in Ukraine. He says he wants, among other areas, all of Donetsk province. That includes the fortress towns of Kramatorsk and Slaviansk – both have Russian-speaking majorities.
They are a short drive from Bakhmut, also a Russian-speaking town, which has been utterly flattened by Russia’s campaign to save them from Ukrainian democracy.
Putin has made it clear that he does not believe Ukraine is a sovereign nation. He also believes that east European countries once dominated by the Soviets should again bow to Moscow. He has designs on the Baltic countries and he has already subverted democracy across the West.
The Cold War may be over but complacency over its end has left Europe unable to accept that it may have to pay a price to defend its way of life, economy, and territory. That is poor leadership.
Owen Matthews recently wrote: “Europe had one chance to sink the Russian economy and blew it. Since its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Russia has pocketed nearly €1 trillion from oil and gas. After China, the EU has been the second biggest buyer of Putin’s gas, handing over €260bn”.
Europe is funding Putin’s war in Europe.
This has to stop. Immediately.
Trump’s performative effort to get Volodymyr Zelensky and Putin around a table for peace talks are doomed because America will not threaten Russia’s president with what he really fears – defeat. The US could throw its might behind Ukraine, alongside Europe, and snap the spine of Russia’s invading armies in Ukraine.
But the US won’t even let Ukraine use long-range Storm Shadow missiles inside Russia, nor even the shorter range ground to ground missiles it now has to buy from Washington with European help. Indeed, the US doesn’t supply any weapons to Ukraine free of charge any more.
All this means that taxpayers across Europe and the UK are going to have to pony up for protection from Putin.
Von der Leyen said that the EU would be coming with more sanctions against Russia “soon”. Starmer said: “This bloodshed must end”.
It will take more leadership than that to rattle the Kremlin.
