Let’s not fall for Putin’s line that he is entitled to control his neighbours
sir – Adam Holloway MP refers to Nato’s “possible mistake in moving its border so much closer to Russia’s” (Commentary, March 6). This narrative has to stop, because it implies that the Western allies were somehow to blame for welcoming former Soviet satellites desperately wanting to get out from beneath the oppressive Russian yoke and move into the democratic Western sphere. This was an inalienable right as self-determining sovereign countries.
To imply otherwise buys into Vladimir Putin’s poisonous line that Russia is somehow “entitled” to control its neighbours.
Roger White
Sherborne, Dorset
sir – I wish everyone would stop talking about “the war in Ukraine”, because it is not a war, it is an attack.
Mr Putin has taken the world back to 1939. Poisonous glory of the kind he is pursuing will end badly – for him. Mick Ferrie
Mawnan Smith, Cornwall
sir – I am ashamed of Britain – a country for which my father died in the Second World War.
Why is the Government stopping Ukrainian refugees from entering? Many are well educated and speak English and would benefit our society, but all should be made welcome, given their horrendous treatment by the madman Vladimir Putin.
Elizabeth Neden
Diddlebury, Shropshire
sir – Fifty years ago, as a young married couple, we often enjoyed the hospitality of Nicky and Grete Winton. Later we were honoured to know Sir Nicholas Winton, as he became. As a nation we are all proud of his role in the Kindertransport – the saving of young children sent to this country to escape Nazi persecution in their own.
Today, Dominic Raab, the Foreign Secretary, and Priti Patel, the Home Secretary – both from refugee families that benefited from British generosity to distressed immigrants – seem to be more concerned with preventing bureaucratic disruption, such as that which Winton and the Kindertransport caused, than with helping refugees. Somehow we are finding it difficult to be quite as proud of Mr Raab and Ms Patel as we are of Sir Nicholas.
Philip and Nicky Stevens
Hartley Wintney, Hampshire
sir – How prescient was Alexander Solzhenitsyn in his amazing Warning to the West when he said: “I am not a critic of the West. I am a critic of the weakness of the West. I am a critic of a fact we can’t comprehend – how one can lose one’s spiritual strength, one’s willpower and, possessing freedom, not value it, not be willing to make sacrifices for it.”
Doug Clark
Currie, Midlothian
sir – It is good that Pope Francis has spoken out against the invasion of Ukraine (report, March 7), though this will not even be reported in Russia.
What if Pope Francis made an immediate visit to Ukraine? As the Vatican’s head of state, he is entitled to visit any country that invites him. It is unlikely that the head of state in Ukraine would not want to invite him.
Even the Russians might be unwilling to kill a pope. But the visit must be very soon while there are still Ukrainians alive to be visited.
Eric Hester
Bolton, Lancashire