Ukraine Dispatch 18 | How Dare We Make an Excuse for Putin

Ukraine Dispatches

Volume 1 2022

I

SINCE BEFORE Russia even invaded Ukraine, our Intelligence in the West has been very accurate both in its assessments and its firm assertion, that Russia would invade Ukraine.

We know that totalitarian states are, by definition, ‘frightened of their own shadow’. People, high and low, disappear in the night, or are gunned down in the street, or imprisoned on entirely trumped-up charges, and a clear criminal modus operandi connect between the dictator and his military and civilian cronies, oligarchs and civil servants. That bunch of have a very clear disconnect with the general public.

II

The United Kingdom’s Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) has been in the forefront with excellent, high-level intelligence briefings.

Likewise, the USA’s Director of National Intelligence … with both intelligence communities working hand-in-glove and taking the unprecedented step of making public what would normally be highly classified Intel Briefs that would only become known in decades hence, when the documents are formally de-classified. This openness is unknown to totalitarian states, and regimes that favour autocracy over democracy.

Thus, when their populations hear of such Intel Briefs they accept as sacrosanct that their governments have, yet again, exposed to them the dangers of fake news.

Our Media is quick to report, and that is good.

III

By the day’s end more reasoned analysis will be given by the BBC’s Context and Newsnight respectively, and which will serve to quietly touch the rudder. Why so?

In media excitement to make the most of such Intel Briefings, suddenly Vladimir Putin, or just plain Putin, has now become President Putin, a chap who’s somehow been let down by those he relies upon for his advice and intelligence. We have the image of a ‘nice chap’, trying to fight a ‘good war’, being completely let down by his generals and his defence ministry.

We are informed that this is because they are in fear of him.

I have not the slightest regard for the mental and physical wellbeing of a tyrant, a bully, a megalomaniac who has personally been responsible for the murder of more than 5,000 civilians in Ukraine since the start of his ‘lightning war’ - for which read blitzkrieg - on 24 February, not to mention thousands of his own troops, not to mention the people of Chechnya and Georgia and Syria over the last 20 years.

IV

When President Bush declared a long time ago now that he had had the opportunity of looking into Putin’s eyes and he had seen his soul … a man with whom the USA could confidently do business … I wonder now what the 43rd president must think, as he ponders that crazy oh-so-born-again-christian vision in the watches of the night. All I see is that odious characteristic of the radical fundamentalist christian brigade aka the ‘born-againers’. Strident, dominant, ruthless in their proselytising their own wildly eccentric, fairy-tale application of scripture.

We all make mistakes. Eventually, reality sets in, and we wonder how on earth we ever fell for such rubbish as ‘literal interpretation.’ And this idiocy is not confined to that lot. They’re found in every religion, every denomination within any religion.

V

As for Putin … simply put, he’s the 21st Century’s Adolf Hitler.

We gave that man no quarter. Gladly, for Putin, we are more civilised now. In 1946 Hitler’s henchmen and some women were summarily executed after trial in Nuremberg. Hitler, too, would have suffered the same fate had he not done the job for the Allies and shot himself.

Vladimir Putin is most certainly culpable. He has waged war upon a peaceful non-threatening nation. He has broken International Law. What he does in Russia to the Russian People is for the Russian People to deal with. But I absolutely stand, and still stand, with President Biden in his statement … for God’s sake, that man has to go!

And as the President has explained, he was merely expressing moral outrage at the criminality of Vladimir Putin, and with which many of us will have found affinity. I say many. That means that some, even here, in sleepy Cheltenham, where GCHQ is located, are not of like mind. There are some who believe that the BBC is totally state-run, who agree with Trump’s assertions this week that Putin should give him the dirt on President Biden, that he was right when he declared the other week that he regarded Putin as a genius, that how can I possibly not see that the Democrats rigged the election and deprived Trump of a second term?! I kept my cool.

VI

In this vibrant democracy, each is allowed their freedom to express their view.

In 1940, one would have expected the leader of the Blackshirts in the UK, Sir Oswald Mosley, to have been interned. Yet Churchill was loathe to do this precisely because the prime minister understood the importance of freedom of speech. Not until May 1940 did he recommend to the King that Mosley and his Blackshirts (Britain’s Nazi Party) be outlawed and interned for the duration of the war. And that is how we dealt with that problem. If one wonders who the Blackshirts were, they were Britain’s openly declared fascists … who yearned for Nazi occupation. [i]

My concern, though, is whether America is able to follow through. If the American public voted for Trump, then we, over here, on this side of the Pond, know this …

That we and Europe and NATO are on our own. However, NATO is powerful and we will not permit an American president to ram a stick into the spokes of the wheel. NATO will not be dictated to by the whims of an unfriendly, plain dotty, quiff in the Oval office, whose ‘hole-in-one’ is, for him, divine confirmation of his ultimate return. What an erk. What a pratt. It beggars belief at the millions of erks and pratts in those 50 states who want the quiff back.

VII

What a curious state to be in. An American president is dealing with a major European war, something we all believed was a thing of the last century, having to contend with his predecessor who borders on treason.

The Apprentice clearly believes his own script, his own TV hype, his love of gold nobs, in just the same way as Putin believes in his own script, his own manufactured hype, his love of gold nobs and of anything that is lawfully owned by someone else.

31 March 2022
All Rights Reserved

© Kenneth Thomas Webb 2022

Footnote

[i] By 1939, total British Union of Fascists membership had declined to just 20,000. On 23 May 1940, the BUF was banned outright by the government via Defence Regulation 18B and Mosley, along with 740 other fascists, was interned for much of the Second World War (Source reference : Wikipedia)