Putin’s brazen aggression has exposed the West’s complacency
SIR – Russia has built up an army with nearly 13,000 tanks.
This has given the man in charge of those tanks the freedom to go where he likes. Vladimir Putin knows that Britain, with its 200 tanks (the same number as Germany and France), will do nothing.
Only America and China have the armies necessary to stop Russia – and, for very different reasons, neither of them will.
Our politicians have for years been asleep on the job of keeping us – and our democratic way of life – safe. Raymond Humphrys
Cambridge
SIR – The West, not least the United Kingdom, has squandered the peace dividend from the Soviet Union’s collapse on wokism, identity politics and eco-lunacy.
So, while Britain’s economy is larger than Russia’s, our military resources are puny in comparison.
We need to change our priorities and stop spending millions on fashionable fripperies like net zero. European nations need to follow suit. Nicholas Dobson
Doncaster, South Yorkshire
SIR – Twice the Prime Minister has been asked about the wisdom of continuing to cut 10,000 troops from the current number. Twice he has deflected the question by referring to increased defence spending – but for what scenario?
The invasion of Ukraine surely reminds us that conventional war is still possible and requires soldiers, tanks, aircraft and a navy capable of leaving port (HMS Diamond being a case in point).
Again we are reminded of the folly of basing defence on assumptions about the future while neglecting boots on the ground.
David Lane
Ludlow, Shropshire
SIR – The reported remarks (February 25) made by the incoming Chief of the General Staff, General Sir Patrick Sanders, on the need to rebalance the British Army towards cyber warfare, reminded me of the time when a group of Nato experts first got their hands on one of the Soviet Union’s most advanced fighter bombers and were shocked, then amused, to see that the avionics packs were based on oldfashioned valves or vacuum tubes.
The tittering stopped, however, when one of them observed that vacuum tubes were immune to the electromagnetic pulse effects of neutron bombs – then much in the thoughts of Nato’s strategic and operational staff members – whereas the solid-state avionics systems of Nato’s combat aircraft were highly vulnerable to them.
No doubt Sir Patrick will be monitoring the effects of analogue rockets and artillery shells on Ukrainian targets, which have then been attacked by large numbers of analogue tanks, and the objectives been seized and held by armoured and mechanised infantry firing distinctly non-digital bullets.
He will know better than most that an unsophisticated enemy, not dependent on cyber and advanced electronic systems at the operational and tactical level, will defeat highly sophisticated forces if there are enough of them and they are committed to defending their homeland, as we saw in southern Iraq.
There has been a potentially tragic misunderstanding in the Ministry of Defence that technology is capable of overcoming mass. The fact is that, in order to insure against the broad spectrum of potential threats, modern armies need both.
Sadly, by failing to keep up the insurance premiums the British Army has been reduced to a state in which it has neither.
Lt Col Patrick Chambers (retd) Rosedale Abbey, North Yorkshire
SIR – You would think that Vladimir Putin might have learnt the lesson from the Soviet Union’s invasion of Afghanistan in 1979. This ended 10 years later with the withdrawal of the Red Army, after it failed to defeat the Mujahideen.
It is one thing to take a country, but quite another to hold it.
Anthony Haslam
Farnham, Surrey
SIR – With protests from ordinary Russian citizens being brutally suppressed through incarceration, we should recall our diplomats from Russia, close our embassy and expel all Russians from the United Kingdom (including those on work permits), freeze all Russian state, business and private assets, and ban entry to all sporting contests both at a national and individual level. Let’s start to show them what being a true pariah really means.
Britain should also push for the immediate suspension of Russia from the United Nations Security Council, and of all who try to veto any such a move and support Russia’s actions. Simon Attwell
Bury, Lancashire
SIR – It appears that the EU is only united when it suits each member state.
With fighting on their very doorstep, certain European countries are putting their own interests first, regardless of the atrocities being carried out. If Mr Putin is successful in Ukraine, will he turn his attention towards Lithuania, Latvia and Poland?
The EU needs a much tougher sanctions package – one that includes the suspension of all Visa money transfers, the closure of all Russian embassies and consulates, and full sanctions on all oligarchs. All flights to and from Russia should be suspended from the end of the month, and European airspace denied to all flights to either Russia or Belarus.
Mr Putin is making all the decisions: embassies around the world are redundant. If the wealthy are targeted, however, they will soon understand that their global playground has disappeared. They are the only ones with the means and ability to influence Mr Putin.
Bruce Murray
Hayling Island, Hampshire
SIR – Almost more terrifying than Mr Putin’s veiled threat to use battlefield nuclear weapons if the West attempts to frustrate his conquest of Ukraine is the fact that Joe Biden, the most disastrous president in American history, has become a war leader.
I’m reminded that, some years ago, Robert Gates, President Obama’s defence secretary, said that Mr Biden had “been wrong on nearly every major foreign policy and national security issue over the past four decades”.
Mr Biden couldn’t possibly mention Afghanistan when he delivers his State of the Union address on March 1. Any reference to it would only remind the world of the shameful cut-and-run from that tragic country, which surely emboldened Mr Putin to make his savage assault on Ukraine.
Stephen Webbe
East Molesey, Surrey
SIR – Once President Biden declared that no US troops would fight in Ukraine the die was cast.
Mr Putin knew that, without US support, any Nato response would simply take the form of sanctions that he was more than willing to endure. He also knew that tacit support would be provided from China.
What are the chances of a Chinese move on Taiwan in the near future, using very similar pretexts?
Tony Fenlon
Girdle Toll, Ayrshire
SIR – There is scant evidence that economic sanctions deter aggression, avert military conflict or change the behaviour of rogue states.
That leaves the West with three viable options to stop a catastrophic war that might rapidly escalate beyond the boundaries of Ukraine: further diplomatic efforts, a full-scale military intervention, or fomenting an internal insurrection in Russia. History shows time and again that all three can succeed.
The Western alliance must urgently reassess its decision to rule out a conventional military response. Amassing troops and equipment in Nato member states bordering Ukraine must be followed by an unequivocal joint statement from the leaders of America, Britain and France that any first use of nuclear weapons by Russia will be met with immediate retaliation. Philip Duly
Haslemere, Surrey
SIR – Jeremy Warner’s critique of Western political myopia in the aftermath of the Cold War (Comment, February 23) was long overdue.
For once, however, the initial culprit was not the EU, but Nato itself – and more specifically President Clinton’s disastrous Secretary of State, Madeleine Albright, who failed to perceive that, if the Cold War was indeed over, its institutions were now an anachronism and required not eastward extension but total replacement.
Peter M Oppenheimer
Oxford
SIR – More than 150 years ago Lord Palmerston remarked: “The policy and practice of the Russian government has always been to push forward its encroachments as fast and as far as the apathy or want of firmness of other governments would allow it to go, but always to stop and retire when met with determined resistance… and then wait for another opportunity.”
It appears that little has changed. Peter Rossiter
Swinford, Co Mayo, Ireland
SIR – Mr Putin is now 69 and his power over Russia has been absolute for nearly 20 years, but his latest utterances suggest that he is beginning to lose his grip somewhat, and perhaps he is becoming vulnerable.
It is encouraging that demonstrations have taken place against him in Russia, and these should be encouraged by the West. At the moment the EU can do little other than apply sanctions, but the West could warn Mr Putin that these and other punishments will last at least 10 years
from his defenestration, when that comes.
Over the years he has been suspected of, among other things, ordering the poisoning of several individuals and shooting down an airliner. Now he has invaded a sovereign country. Nato nations could consider moving to indict Mr Putin on crimes against humanity – a list to be added to until he is caught.
No place in the world should provide a safe haven for him.
David Belchamber
Warminster, Wiltshire
SIR – The situation in Ukraine has laid bare the folly of Britain’s current energy policy.
If this entirely predictable situation does not force a rethink on fracking then what will?
That Britain is at the mercy of global energy markets when we have bountiful supplies of our own is a basic dereliction of the Government’s duty to its people. Individuals and businesses are going to be crippled by energy price rises for no reason other than to placate a tiny section of society who are net-zero fanatics. This has to change.
Steve Plampin
Coggeshall, Essex
SIR – Now is the time – if it is not already too late – to plough our fallow fields, extract our enormous gas supplies and mine the high-quality coal available to us under the North Sea, and give ourselves a chance of a slightly more comfortable future with
our own home-supplied energy and home-grown food.
David Statham Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire
SIR – On hearing the news of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, I was reminded of the thoughtful and passionate words of Yehudi Menuhin one hot, sticky evening at the Edinburgh Festival in 1968. This was a day or two after August 20, when 200,000 Warsaw Pact troops and 5,000 tanks had invaded Czechoslovakia to crush the Prague Spring.
Shortly before commencing his performance of Beethoven’s violin concerto, Menuhin turned to the audience and said: “In these days of dark despair, an echo of 30 years ago, I dedicate this performance, as Beethoven did his life, to the indomitable and defiant spirit of mankind.” I hope the spirit and defiance of democratic Ukrainians prove as indomitable in the dark days and weeks ahead.
David A Lord
Dunfermline, Fife