Russia’s invasion of Ukraine yesterday was as frightening as it was fascinating. We are watching, live, a modern war by one of the world’s superpowers, maybe attempting to redraw the map of Europe or overthrow a neighbour’s government by military force. President Vladimir Putin had massed 190,000 troops on the border, mobilised tanks, artillery pieces and those bulky Russian missile launchers often seen during parades in the Kremlin.
Russia has always ruled Ukraine, it would appear. For centuries actually, and it’s only after the fall of the Soviet Union that Ukrainians governed themselves, sometimes under pro-Russian regimes. President Volodymyr Zelensky is strongly anti-Russian and, after taking bites off the country in the east and Crimea, Putin appears to have decided to finally throw caution to the wind and go for the whole deal.
I met President Putin in the Kremlin in 2007 — or rather, I was in a crowd of editors which he addressed. He is a shockingly short guy with fluid, gymnast joints and an immobile face which struggled with expressions. Somebody had written a musical piece to journalism and an orchestra performed it for us. That year, the Pen award was given to an Iranian journalist for resisting the repressive regime in Iran. I am sure the irony wasn’t lost on Mr Putin, a canny former KGB spy.
The former imperial parts of Moscow are wonderful; truly grand with beautiful old buildings and wide boulevards. The Kremlin itself is quite something, as is the body of Lenin, which, as I have written before, glows rather brightly in the dark, obviously more of wax than old flesh and bones. The Communist-era apartment blocks are the city’s armpit. They are bigger, uglier, dirtier versions of Nyayo House.
Many years later, I went to Kiev, a city whose hotels were obsessed with pole dancing by very tall Eurasian women with black hair reaching their knees and who reminded me of horses. I remember, too, Babushkas, cabbage soup, some German-type sausage, big architecture and a society with confusing flashes of superpower and developing.
President Putin’s behaviour has been confident, almost rude, demanding written guarantees from the US and Nato that Ukraine will not be allowed to join Nato, among others. Maybe we missed the signs but his was the demeanour of a man who had made up his mind and was making demands that he knew could not be met and was merely going through the motions.
The Americans, to their credit, had very good intelligence about Mr Putin’s intentions and methods. So much so that they told us well in advance Mr Putin’s game plan, down to the so-called false flag operations where attacks were staged to justify an invasion.
He went ahead with the plan anyway, to the extent of sending “peacekeeping” troops into eastern Ukraine, where the Russian minority, which declared independence with the support of Russian troops in 2014, was allegedly under attack by the Ukrainian army. In his TV address, he also claimed that he was moving to free Ukraine from a Neo-Nazi junta. President Zelensky is Jewish.
Former US President Donald Trump expressed admiration for Putin’s methods, as did former CIA director and Secretary of State in his administration, Mike Pompeo. The right-wing media joined the chorus of support and American public opinion appeared divided; Mr Putin seems to have cracked traditional rhetoric about support for freedom. Or it was just politics with the Trump sphere supporting a side they knew the Democrats would oppose.
Whatever the case, the US and Nato do not appear to be in a position to do more than sanctions, and probably not very severe ones at that. Russia is chairing the Security Council at the United Nations, meaning the UN can’t do anything against Moscow beyond individual members expressing outrage. US President Joe Biden has imposed sanctions against Russia but ruled out going to war to protect the independence of Ukraine. Nobody, apart from the Ukrainians, will.
There is nothing, and no one, to stop Mr Putin from taking another country. Ukraine is not some backwoods; it is the second-biggest country in Europe, after Russia. That he could invade another European country without any serious consequences is probably a turning point for the world and the modern Western-led order. And the fact that there is no unanimity in US condemnation of the invasion sends the message that things have changed. Gone are the days when America could say it was sending troops to the Middle East to protect Kuwait, which was being bullied by Iraq’s Saddam Hussein.
Watching the invasion on TV gives me the same feeling I got seeing planes flown into buildings in New York. I can’t help feeling that something tragic, but so momentous that it changes our world, is happening. What would happen, then, if China sent its forces across the Taiwan strait to take Taiwan? Would Mr Biden issue a statement and threaten an economic blockade against Beijing?
