Ukraine Dispatch 17 | Uncompromising, Direct, Blunt and Very Correct!

Ukraine Dispatches

Volume 1 : March 26, 2022

I

President Biden’s visit to Brussels, to NATO Headquarters, to the European Union, and of course his two days in Poland with the Polish president – President Andrzej Duda - has been greatly welcomed.

The US President’s Address to the People of Warsaw, the People of Poland, the People of Ukraine, and indeed to the World, was a breath of fresh air that mark one of the turning points in solidifying the stance that NATO and the West now takes in facing up to the sheer terror unleashed upon Ukraine by the Russian Federation. A breath of fresh air! We who believe in liberal democracy, a chill wind for those who yearn for autocratic rule, despotism, and appointment as lifetime leaders of their states by manipulating their own constitutions and silencing all forms of dissent.

II

President Biden expressed in clear and unmistakable language the language that we, the ordinary people in the street, would use if we had the opportunity to speak to Vladimir Putin, a man who has metamorphosed from his country’s dubious head of state and all at once slithered down that plummeting stairway to dictator, then tyrant, then butcher, then war criminal. It is understandable that the White House has played down the President’s final comment, but nations are left in no doubt that the president is correct in saying that Putin cannot be allowed to stay in power.

The tyrant has to go.

However, all of us agree this can only be achieved within Russia by the Russian People, and because they desire such change. That is a matter for them, not for us. At present, they have no such desire. They like what they’ve got.

III

We in the West, in the democracies, take for granted the power of the ballot box.

Many times I have used the example of a very grateful British public in 1945 when war in Europe had ended in victory, that the people felt that whilst they owed everything to their wartime leader Winston Churchill, nevertheless, with the approach of peace - Japan had still yet to be defeated - and a return to normal governance, it was time to exercise their political will to say ‘thank you’ to their wartime prime minister and to then, promptly, stand him and his wartime coalition government down.

That is the very essence of liberal democracy. That is at the very core of that for which I live and breathe.

Both Russia and China now know full well that NATO is preparing to defend itself. Joint exercises in Norway, which shares a border with Russia, planned long before this war started, is now being conducted with a sense of purpose and of urgency. The world we thought we lived in vanished in the darkness of that pre-dawn on Thursday, 24 February 2022. It is but 31 days ago and yet, already, a lifetime. How on earth must it feel for the People of Ukraine?

IV

The thought that some autocracy, some tyrant, some trumped up little general, admiral or air marshal could make all my decisions for me, including the removal of me because I did not agree with those decisions, is abhorrent.

Here, in the United Kingdom, we are an island people and we guard well our shores and take very seriously our maritime role. We are fiercely independent; we even fight amongst ourselves as all families do. But put a great cause before the People, and as has proved decisively with Ukraine, we stand united, we set aside internal differences, and we put our collective shoulder to the wheel. I am British, and for what it is worth I happen to be English. I say this. I may be proud of what England is doing, but boy, I burst my buttons with pride when I see Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. That gives you a hint of what makes up these islands, and within these islands we are made up of every kind from all parts of the Globe, and this is showing itself with the same resolve that our parents, grandparents and great-grandparents demonstrated 83 years ago in 1939. Their mindset was that of a Nation that comprised four nations.

V

We stand absolutely with the People of Ukraine, and indeed, we stand with our cousins across the Pond – the United States of America with whom, it has to be said (and I am saying this with a warm-hearted smile) something of a topsy turvy ‘special’ relationship, and I love it!

I am so proud to have been able to witness,
in real time,
one of the most important addresses
in this 21st-century to date,
and made by the
46th president of the United States of America, President Joseph Biden.

VI

All of us know what has to be done. All of us realise that we are in this war for the long haul. All of us realise that we must do everything in our power to prevent this war from escalating into World War III.

Our argument is most certainly not with the Russian people.

It is, however, with that tyrant in the Kremlin, a man who dreams of recreating a rotten, ruthless empire in exactly the same way that Benito Mussolini thought he could do in 1922.

Let us hope that Vladimir Putin does not suffer the indignity and horror that befell Benito Mussolini and his mistress at the hands of the Italian people at the height of World War II as that hapless couple attempted to flee to Switzerland. Italian partisans intercepted them and their end was swift, but terrifyingly ignominious.

March 26, 2022
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© Kenneth Thomas Webb 2022

A peaceful evening, having just completed the recording of Podcast Ukraine Dispatch 17 Uncompromising, Direct, Blunt and Very Correct!