Better to talk to Russia than join the kicking brigade

RUSSIA is in the news these days and now Ireland has joined the countries around the world expelling some Russia diplomatic staff from their embassy on Dublin’s Orwell Road. I visited the Soviet Union with a group of students in the 1980s. A few of us met a man on the street in Moscow, we got talking and he brought us back to his apartment for a coffee. He was keen to tell us that it was a risk for him to be seen with foreigners. We also had a reception at the Irish embassy, where we received a great welcome.

I remember little about the history we learned in school but I do recall that when it came to the Second World War we seldom heard of the role that Russia played in the fight against Hitler.

The 1962 film ‘The Longest Day’, based on the book by Irish man Cornelius Ryan, told the story of the Normandy landings. Back then there was little or no information on what happened on the eastern front.

Historians agree that a significant moment in the defeat of Hitler happened on the river Volga at Volgograd, which was then called Stalingrad. It was there in 1942/43 that the Germans met their first significant defeat. Soviet Marshal General Georgii Zhukov defeated the German Sixth Army under the command of Field Marshal Friedrich Paulus. It was the beginning of the end of Hitler but it came with a great price.

When Britain’s foreign secretary Boris Johnson agreed with a fellow Conservative MP in comparing the upcoming World Cup in Russia to the Berlin 1936 Olympics as a propaganda coup for Putin he gravely insulted Mother Russia. Had he forgotten that Russia lost between 23 and 25 million people in fighting the Germans?

Unfortunately, Russia too was saddled with a dictator. Stalin was a tyrant and communism was a nasty ideology that did great harm in Russia and across the world.

When the Berlin Wall fell in 1989 and communism died a death the world breathed a sigh of relief. But there was a sense of western triumphalism that frightened Russia. Russia under Yeltsin was humiliated.

The Russians are accustomed to being ruled by tsars. Along comes a former KGB Dresden operative, who fills the role of a new tsar.

We are told the nastiest things about Vladimir Putin. They may all be true. It is said that he is one of the wealthiest men in the world. Under his leadership Russia annexed Crimea. The Russian Orthodox Church welcomed Putin’s re-election. Patriarch Kirill complimented him on what he has done for the country in ‘preserving and multiplying our nation’s spiritual, moral and cultural values’.

I don’t like how Putin’s Russia treats people and the Orthodox Church seems to be hand-in-glove with the government. The treatment meted out to the feminist punk rock group Pussy Riot was shocking.

I’m intrigued as to why the Russians would not think of a cleverer way of killing one of their former spies, who became a double agent. Or are they simply being brazen and provocative?

Why not close off the UK to the oligarchs and their vast wealth? What happens if Russia turns off the gas that it sells across Europe?

Would it not be better for the western powers and the Russians to sit down and talk? Talking is not appeasement. Has the Holy See expelled any Russian diplomats? I haven’t heard they have.

Remember what we were told about Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction?