Worse than Putin

Contrary to the opinion of John Watkins (Weekend Herald, September 3) third-party Kremlin watchers, e.g. Norwegian Professor of geopolitics Glenn Diesen, state that Vladimir Putin is the restraining force stopping the Russian military going “full Nato”. He is under heavy political pressure to allow them to do so.

Remember that the Nato bombing of Baghdad resulted in an estimated half a million children killed and that the American Secretary of State said “it was worth it”. That is the bar that we, the collective West, have set.

Those third parties with military competence consider Russia is using, at most, 20 per cent of its forces in Ukraine. If Putin falls, a hard-liner will certainly take over and Ukraine will cease to exist in short order. Declassified US State Department documents indicate that the war was engineered in Washington and London to force Russia to fight. Well, we, the Collective West, have our (leaders’) desires met.

G. N. Kendall, Rothesay Bay.