Three years ago, I woke to the thunderous dawn sounds of missiles striking Kyiv. I found my colleague Kate on the balcony of our rented flat, smoking a cigarette as she listened to munitions hitting her home city. “Did you hear that?” she asked. “It’s started.”
Since then, I have spent many months reporting on the cities destroyed by Russian weapons, families ripped apart by war, refugees forced to flee occupied homes, ordinary people risking lives amid the horrors of the front line, and children stolen on orders of the Kremlin in its genocidal efforts to crush a nation.
This war really started eight years earlier with Russia’s theft of Crimea, another sad milestone of history I witnessed. Their decision to mount a full-scale attack failed due to the resilience and resistance of Ukraine’s people, symbolised by the President’s refusal to flee.
Moscow expected Ukraine to fold in days with their troops welcomed – and that any residual fighting for freedom would be abandoned quickly by their democratic allies. It has taken three years, huge financial cost and the spilling of obscene amounts of blood but finally – as Russia launches its biggest drone attack on Kyiv to mark this sordid anniversary – Vladimir Putin’s expectations of Western weakness are being borne out by the behaviour of a patsy United States president.
Donald Trump’s posturing over the most lethal war on European soil since the Second World War is both disturbing and a disgraceful betrayal of democracy.
He has handed armloads of diplomatic gifts to a war criminal in the Kremlin – to the ridiculous extent of accusing Ukraine of starting the war, excluding Kyiv from peace talks on its own future, calling its elected president a “dictator”, and then demanding the country that came under attack hand over half its revenues from natural resources to the US.
His predictable and idiotic stance was accompanied by the squirming of his quislings – ranging from Republicans such as Marco Rubio through to Tories such as Boris Johnson – as they pretend to support Ukraine’s people while promoting this US President who seems such a Russian stooge.
This war is the defining issue of our age. We should have no illusions over the threat to Europe if Russia’s imperial ambitions are not checked, allowing Putin to boast of victory even if he ends up with just one-fifth of a country he tried to grab.
We will see more tests of Western resolve with aggression in other places along with the now-familiar battery of cyber attacks, sabotage and disinformation designed to corrode our democratic societies, especially with Moscow’s economy on full war footing.
Nor should there be any delusions that this war does not reflect the wider views of many Russians – fuelled by Putin’s propaganda – that they were humiliated by the collapse of communism and must expand their borders again, regardless of the cost or wishes of nations that escaped repression.
But the speed and ferocity with which Trump turned on Volodymyr Zelensky shows how the foreign policy of the world’s strongest nation and key democracy is driven by one man’s monumental ego. Ukraine’s leader worked hard to flatter the incoming US president, yet lies and abuse spewed out from the White House – and these intensified after Zelensky dared to respond by suggesting Trump was trapped in a Russian-created “disinformation bubble”.
How, for example, could Ukraine hold an election when so much land is occupied and millions of citizens have fled abroad, let alone guard their vote against Moscow’s manipulation at the moment? As a GB News host had to remind Reform UK leader Nigel Farage, one of Trump’s shills, our nation went a decade without elections when fighting the Nazis – and a bust of Sir Winston Churchill, symbol of that fight for freedom, just returned to the Oval Office.
When the US is led by such a vain and insecure character, other leaders fawn over him from fear of incurring his wrath and tariffs. This week, both the French President and our Prime Minister visit the US, trying to shift Trump away from simply echoing the Kremlin as he seeks to force Kyiv into an unstable “peace” and lift sanctions that hinder business with Russia.
As a curtain-raiser, the US President falsely claimed Europe is “basically giving nothing” to Ukraine. In fact, European donations outstrip those from his nation, with Britain giving a greater percentage of its GDP than the US and some smaller countries such as Denmark spending, proportionately, four times more. But facts are hard for people to find amid a blizzard of lies – a tactic tried and tested by Putin’s disinformation machinery.
Meanwhile, as Germany’s election is expected to show, far-right, pro-Russian parties are on the march in Europe. Trump’s team fan the flames of these disruptive forces to spread their insurgency across our continent, effectively in alliance with Moscow’s efforts.
This was made clear by the focus of the Conservative Political Action Conference just held in Washington, addressed by Trump and many leading acolytes including a manic Elon Musk. Vice President JD Vance complained again about free speech in Europe while warning that the strength of their alliances rested on societies going “in the right direction”.
Yet even a French far-right leader pulled out after Steve Bannon became the latest prominent figure to give what appeared to be a Nazi salute from a platform (although this did not deter the likes of Farage and Liz Truss).
Perhaps Trump will one day turn on Putin. Perhaps Emmanuel Macron and Sir Keir Starmer can shift this volatile US President to a smarter view of the world.Perhaps this is just a four-year nightmare for the West’s most important nation. Or perhaps we are seeing in recent days the ugly realities of a new world order where might is right and Washington is warmer to our autocratic foes than its traditional European allies.
I cling to faith in the wondrous optimism of the American spirit – but fear the betrayal of Ukraine might just be the opening chapter in a dark story for democracy.
Comments
Leave a Comment