Donald Trump

Worlds largest gun, see below
In Part Two it was our intention to look at some of the people involved in the response to the war in Ukraine. It was a short list: Emmanuel Macron, Olaf Scholz and Boris Johnson. However, now Johnson has resigned things have changed and the new PM, Liz Truss, has been chosen by the Conservative party. She has an opportunity to alter the way the UK responds to the war, we don’t know whether this will happen but for the moment we will carry on with this post.

First we look at Macron, he has been criticised for making contact with Putin, this has been described as weak. In time the war may reach a point where formal peace negotiation can begin, then perhaps the position of Macron changes as he will have a leading role. We may assume this is what he wants; but is this right? Probably yes as he put the effort into getting to such a position. Macron would most likely share this role with Erdogan from Turkey, also Finland and Sweden. The latter two who renounced neutrality following the invasion of Ukraine would be consulted. It will be interesting to see the role of the UK here. Post invasion under Johnson the UK took a rather belligerent approach to Russia. This we will return to later.

A WW1 battlefield.

Russia invaded Ukraine on 24th Feb 2022 so we have been watching this for four months now. This would not be the first war in the region and it could be said the origins of the present conflict go back to 2014 at least. The history of this part of the world is complex and countries from the Baltic Sea to the Black Sea have fought each other over centuries. There have also been alliances which have been formed and dissolved long before the EU or NATO came along. So it’s easy to see why Putin thinks that he has a right to revisit the past and claim that parts of Ukraine ‘belong’ to Russia. To get a better understanding we have to look at things from the point of view of Putin. The EU thinks that not only should it have, ‘an ever closer union’ among member states but it should be always expanding too. Putin objects to this. In the same we here in, ‘the West’, saw it as our duty to resist the spread of Communism prior to the Berlin Wall coming down so Putin sees he has a, ‘duty’, to Russia. Indeed one can imagine that while many people have forgotten the reunification of Germany following the removal of the Berlin Wall Putin would be word perfect on that subject. He has his own beliefs that are also dynamic. Hence the old well worn trope of, we are good, but, ‘Russia is bad’ is misplaced.