UK dragging its feet on helping Ukraine
TWO Quotations:
Donald Tusk, former prime Minister of Poland and President of the European Council: “Ukraine embodies courage and a wonderfully grown-up sense of how you can be a proud people with a strong identity who are also internationalist & eager to be connected into a comity of like-minded nations – which is how the future must be if there is to be peace.”
Professor AC Grayling: “If you undermine the European unity and promote nationalism, you are Putin’s ally. If you attack the rule of law, media freedom and human rights in your country, you are Putin.”
When we, in shock, witness the dead bodies of a young family and children, lives like ours, snatched by Russian mortar fire fleeing their homes in fear, we should reflect.
Our state was a guarantor of Ukraine’s security when it gave up nuclear weapons. Our businesses welcomed a deluge of Russian gold laundered in Londongrad. Our politicians embraced oligarchs with wealth derived from orchestrated theft in Yeltsin’s Russia, and kept subject only to the whim of Putin. Our government, in our name, embraced those who enabled and were enabled by Putin. Now Putin’s true nature is clear – excuses evaporate.
Are we world leaders, we who hold the largest holdings of Russian wealth? We are way behind Europe, USA, Canada, Japan, South Korea in freezing or seizing it, in rhetoric bold, in delivery, abjectly behind our neighbours.
As far as we are indecisive, slow, or reluctant, that far are we complicit in, tolerant of, Putin’s murderous hate – of mothers, fathers, little children, families like ours?
And in our name, Patel puts every conceivable barrier to allowing families, like that family lying lifeless on a cold Ukrainian street, seek refuge with us.
We are the only country in Europe to behave so. We should cry out in shame.
David Powell