Ukraine doesn’t want history to repeat itself by appeasing Putin

1. Was the Russian invasion of Ukraine any different from Britain and France’s invasion of Egypt in 1956 (the Suez Crisis) or the annexation by the USA of part of Mexico in 1848?

2. The West is demonising Mr Putin.

3. The West is to blame for the war in the Ukraine.

1. International laws were first enacted following the First World War. Although Britain and France made a case for the legality of their seizure of the Suez Canal in 1956 following its nationalisation by President Nasser of Egypt, the majority of other countries, including the USA, did not agree and the United Nations condemned the invasion, calling for the removal of troops. The troops were removed and no legal case was ever made against the British, French and Israeli governments.

On the other hand, the annexation of Mexican territory by the USA in 1848 did not break any laws or international conventions in force at that time. The Mexican-American War of 1846-8 was ended by the Treaty of Hidalgo which ceded Mexican territory to the Americans. The treaty was negotiated and signed by both sides, thus establishing a legal agreement that the Mexican territory had been legally ceded to the United States. It is recognised as such internationally.

To provide balance, Mr Ward could have included the annexation of Finnish territory by the Soviet Union in 1939 following the unprovoked invasion of Finland with the objective of annexing that Finnish territory. This was an illegal act under international law but because of the geopolitical realities at the time (World War 2 and the subsequent chaos in Europe) the de facto annexation was eventually accepted by the international community.

The difference between the Suez Crisis and both the illegal annexations of Finnish territory in 1939 and the current illegal annexation of Ukrainian territory (the Crimea and in the Donbas region) is that France and Britain pulled their troops out of Egypt, re-establishing the status quo. Not so the Russians.

However, at the end of the day, how Britain and France behaved over half a century ago is irrelevant today, and both countries are morally entitled to take Russia to task over its current illegal activities.

2. Putin needs no help from the West with being demonised – he’s doing it all himself.

He lied when he said he wasn’t going to invade the Ukraine; he lied when he claimed that the Ukraine was run by Nazis – ironic since President Zelensky, is Jewish; he lied when he said that Russia was not involved in the downing of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17 which was, in fact, destroyed by a Russian Buk surface-to-air missile; he lied when he said that Russia had not poisoned Alexander Litvinenko in London (the FSB agents involved in the poisoning were subsequently decorated by Putin); not to mention the Russian opponents die who happen to die in suspicious or violent circumstances – the list goes on and on.

No, Mr Ward, if Putin is being demonised, he is making a good job of it all by himself.

3. As for the West being responsible for Russia losing the Warsaw Pact countries which acted as a buffer between Russia and the West, you don’t have to look any further for the causes for their loss.

It was the result of the oppression and loss of freedom at the hands of the Russian State experienced by those countries over a period of more than 40 years.

So great was their resultant distrust of the Russian state that when their independence was restored, the liberated states rapidly sought some form of protection from their former gaolers.

Granted that nobody can know for certain what Machiavellian schemes were discussed behind the closed doors of the Kremlin, and of the White House during the Cold War, but on the publicly available evidence, the least tortuous scenario is that with the dissolution of the Soviet Union in December 1991 the formed buffer states sought protection by applying to join Nato.

Nato did not approach them, they approached Nato. Those states had learnt the lesson from their own and other countries’ dealings in the 1930s with Hitler in an effort to avoid war. Appeasement was the (unsuccessful) method they tried.

The lesson learned was ‘don’t trust the words of dictatorial regimes and don’t appease them – it only makes them greedy for more’. It is the truth of that lesson which Sweden and (eventually) Finland have eventually learned as they witnessed Russia’s illegal unprovoked invasion of the Ukraine.

Putin has only himself to blame that now he has two more members of Nato to cope with, one on his very border.

As for the EU (helped by the US?) seeking to expand its empire by ‘enticing the Ukraine away from its historical ties to Russia’, I doubt that many Ukrainians would see it that way.

Apart from the honeymoon period after the overthrow of the Tsar in 1917, there has been little love lost between the Ukraine and successive Russian communist governments.

The imposition of Bolshevik rule resulted in a distrustful relationship exemplified most obviously by the Russian demands for ‘farm collectivisation’ (i.e. State control of all farms in the Ukraine) which in 1932 caused a severe famine, the results of which were then hugely exacerbated because Stalin forbade any news getting out which would expose to the world the myth that the communist philosophy was the answer to everybody’s hopes of a better, fairer life.

As a result 3.9m. Ukrainians (13% of the population) died (the ‘Holodomor’) when most could have been saved if the Russian actions had not prevented famine relief reaching the Ukrainians from the capitalistic West.

Unsurprisingly, 10 years later the invading German troops were greeted by Ukrainian peasants offering them bread and salt (a traditional sign of welcome and respect) because they thought that the Germans were liberating them from an oppressive and hated regime – the Russians.

Such a degree of animosity does not disappear quickly from folk memory and it still resonates today. The Ukrainians did not need much persuasion to break ties with Russia, their former oppressors.

So, please don’t go claiming the West actively persuaded the Ukrainians to distance themselves from Russia.

In summary, Putin’s current woes and those of the Ukrainian population are entirely due to Putin’s megalomaniac pursuit of the reinstatement of the old Russian Empire. Despite the USA occasionally behaving in an overbearing fashion towards the rest of the world, the current Western governments remembers the lessons learned following the 1938 appeasement of Hitler and is trying to prevent the Russian aggressor from profiting from his acts of invading and annexing eastern parts of the Ukraine (the Crimea, and the Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts). They don’t want history to repeat itself by appeasing Putin.

TONY LEE