President Putin’s practice of deceiving
King Lear, as so often, summed things up. ‘‘Go to,’’ he said, ‘‘they are not men of their words.’’ Let’s begin with Article 2 of the Charter of the United Nations. ‘‘All members,’’ it says, ‘‘shall settle their international disputes by peaceful means.’’ That’s unambiguous and every member of the UN has signed up for it.
But how do you enforce it? You create a Security Council.
‘‘In order to ensure prompt and effective action by the United Nations, its members confer on the Security Council primary responsibility for the maintenance of international peace and security.’’
That too is unambiguous.
The Security Council, with five permanent members and 10 rotating ones, is charged with keeping the peace. And which country is the current president of the Security Council? It is the Russian Federation. That same Russian Federation as has just invaded another member country with a view to toppling its freely elected government and
A girl holds a sign reading ‘‘Putin see you in The Hague’’ in Cologne, Germany, during a peace march on Monday against the war in Ukraine.
rendering it a vassal state.
How do you treat with such hypocrisy? You don’t treat with it. There is no point.
These people lie. ‘‘We have no plans to invade Ukraine,’’ said Russian President Vladimir Putin last week. ‘‘We have no plans to invade Ukraine,’’ said Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov last week. They do not believe that words matter. Nor do they act in good faith.
They think words are just tools to deceive with. They think good faith is for suckers.
Suckers are people like you and me and Neville Chamberlain. We assume that
people have a degree of honesty, a degree of human sympathy, a degree of conscience. We assume if we make a pact with them, they will keep it. But these people see a pact as something to break at a moment of their choosing. They are not men of their words.
There is nothing new here. It’s the oldest story. People like Putin are drawn to power and once they acquire it they only get worse. He used to be a lieutenant colonel in the KGB, and you don’t get there by being awash with the milk of human kindness. Now he’s a full-blown autocrat.
Recently he appeared on television with a cabinet of advisers in a room of dwarfing fascist architecture. Putin sat to one side behind a desk. His advisers sat 20 metres away on stools, like a class of schoolboys.
Ostensibly they were advising him. Actually he was making them complicit in his crimes. It was the naked exercise of power. None dared to oppose him. He loved their fear. Bullies always do.
It was reminiscent of one of Donald Trump’s televised cabinet meetings when he went around the table inviting his underlings to praise him. Trump sought praise because he knew he didn’t deserve it. Putin sought agreement because he knows he’s in the wrong.
Putin is also afraid. What he’s afraid of, and has been for years, is the truth. Why else are his political opponents dead or in prison? Why else are Russian media sycophantic or out of business? Why else are thousands of anti-war protesters snatched from the streets by his police? Putin feels the fear of every dictator, that his own people will drag him from his palace and tear him limb from limb. He is afraid because he knows he deserves it.
He may prevail in Ukraine in the short term but not in the long. His soldiers are mainly young conscripts who won’t want to die for his cause. His opponents are citizens of Ukraine who’ll be willing to die for theirs.
If you were in Kyiv now, would you take up arms? Yes, so would I, unhesitatingly. So will the Ukrainians. He can’t kill them all.