War won’t solve Ukraine’s problems

WHENEVER I come across the phrase “I can only assume that ...” it’s almost always followed by a load of nonsense.

Brian Dickinson (letters, April 1) doesn’t disappoint. It’s really instructive to be informed of an opinion I never knew I had. And what better way to get the point across than by using a bit of gaslighting which references the P word!

It does, however, force you to examine the power of personality in politics. I guess a few rather shallow judges might see personality as everything. So that one’s admiration of a political figure such as George Galloway implies a belief that he is always right. Let’s be candid ... he’s not!

Likewise Tony Blair. He did a marvellous job addressing the Irish Question, but made a series of terrible decisions endangering world peace.

In my lifetime I can only think of two politicians I have always agreed with – Nelson Mandela and Mikhail Gorbachev.

And when it comes to the war in Ukraine any discussion must be informed by the latter’s arguments.

Read the open letter he sent to Obama and Putin when the war started in 2014 in which he proposed a summit conference. Consider the issues he outlined in his monumental 2016 publication “The New Russia” and how they might be addressed.

When the majority of the Kosovan population expressed a desire to separate from Serbia the West offered its support. When the majority of Catalonians expressed a wish to separate from Spain western leaders looked the other way. When Crimeans sought separation from Ukraine we offered open hostility. This lack of consistency, this selective application of democratic principles just doesn’t feel right.

No serious western commentator I’ve come across denies that there is strong majority support for separation in Crimea.

And while the situation in Donbas is less clear, the idea that the local population is unified in its attitude to the war isn’t credible.

War won’t solve Ukraine’s problems. Sooner or later diplomacy will assert itself once more as brave politicians rediscover the power of true democracy and devolution.