Piers Akerman: Vladimir Putin finds little resistance beyond Ukraine borders
The European Union has so far done little more than offer refuge to a million or so civilians who have fled the Russian bombardment, Piers Akerman writes.
Opinion
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Ukrainians are paying a cruel price in blood and treasure to the murderous Russian tyrant Vladimir Putin as his missiles destroy their lives and property.
But the Western liberal democracies are also paying a massive price as any illusions that international safeguards against brutality can be effective are destroyed.
Putin has told French President Emmanuel Macron Russia has no intention of halting the attacks, let alone withdrawing from the captured territory, and his goal is to seize the nation in its entirety to “de-Nazify Ukraine to the end”.
His fantasy is to recreate the imperial Russia of the tsars and with his annexation of Donetsk and Luhansk – the so-called breakaway republics – and his capture of Georgia and Crimea, he is well on his way to fulfilling his dream.
The European Union has so far done little more than offer refuge to a million or so civilians who have fled the Russian bombardment.
Strong words in Brussels don’t match high explosives in Kyiv, no matter how strongly former German defence minister, Ursula von der Leyen, now president of the European Commission, condemns Putin’s actions.
Europe has been left vulnerable because of the insane acceptance of the highly dubious claims of fanatical green climate extremists who successfully demanded that reliable coal-powered plants be closed.
Germany’s former leader Angela “Mutti” Merkel, an unreconstructed East German-born socialist, went even further, decommissioning her nation’s nuclear power plants. Bowing to green lunacy played into the hands of Russia which now supplies the gas essential to power Western Europe.
With their energy in Russia’s hands and Ukraine falling (after a probably protracted and terribly bloody siege involving thousands of deaths on both sides), the European nations will accept Russian seizure of most of Ukraine’s critical resources so they can continue to have airconditioning and hot showers without resorting to nasty coal power.
US President Joe Biden also gave away the US’s strategic fuel advantage when he reversed Donald Trump’s domestic energy certainty for foreign oil dependency, playing into Russia’s hands.
The hard lessons which should have been learnt by the multiple failures of Jimmy Carter’s hopeless administration haven’t been heeded by Biden’s administration.
The ugly but pragmatic nature of realpolitik is on full display closer to home with India’s failure to condemn the Russian invasion while maintaining its position in the Quad – with the US, Japan and Australia – the implicit purpose of which is to present a united front (belatedly) against Chinese aggression and expansion in the Indo-Pacific.
Sourcing most of its weapons from Russia, it wants the assurances of a Western alliance should China continue to attack its borders but it doesn’t wish to cut its ties with its longtime arms supplier.
Is it possible to curry favour with Russia and the West at the same time or is India seeking to have its pappadum and eat it too?
Early on Friday morning, Prime Minister Scott Morrison met with his fellow Quad leaders, who he said were “leaders of liberal democratic nations who uphold the values and principles of our rules-based international order”.
He then said: “We come together to support a free and open Indo-Pacific and to take action to deliver for our region.
“Together we are committed to supporting a region where the sovereignty and territorial integrity of all states is respected, the status quo cannot be changed by force, and coercion is not tolerated.”
No mention of the obvious change of the status quo in Eastern Europe. Perhaps this is Indian PM Modi’s new modus operandi. The Quad ignores Ukraine’s plight to keep the subcontinental partner in the tent.
It must be enormously reassuring to Ukraine’s freedom fighters to know their liberty is secondary to the considerations of another alliance in another part of the world.
Just as the pledges in the Budapest Memorandum in 1994 – given to Ukraine, Kazakhstan and Belarus and signed by Russia, the UK and the US, providing assurances against the use of force when it came to territorial integrity in return for them giving up their nuclear weapons – have now proven worthless.
Putin has shown with impunity that freedom is negotiable if one is prepared to act inhumanely.
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