I’ve been watching a brilliant documentary on BBC2, The Zelensky Story. If you’ve not seen it, I recommend you search it out on iPlayer. Apart from anything else, the archive footage of his early years is fascinating. I hadn’t fully appreciated just how huge a star the proudly Jewish Volodymyr Zelensky was in Ukraine when he ran for the presidency – think Peter Kay, Ant and Dec and Ricky Gervais rolled into one.
There is one piece of footage that is the perfect example of a picture being worth a thousand words. In December 2019 France’s President Macron hosted a meeting in Paris alongside the then German Chancellor, Angela Merkel, to bring Vladimir Putin together with Zelensky to see if agreement could be reached over the future of Ukraine. After the summit – which, as we know, achieved nothing – there was a press conference with the four leaders. The cameras usually stop filming at the end of these things but, for whatever reason, this time one kept rolling after it had finished. And it shows one of the most telling examples of power dynamics you will ever see. As the leaders rise from their seats, Merkel and Macron start speaking with Putin – fawning over him, really. They stand close together, in a group.
At the other end of the room, Zelensky stands alone, ignored by all of them. It’s all the more striking an image because it says so much about how we got to the stage where Putin felt – wrongly, as it turned out – that he could invade Ukraine with impunity.
The invasion of Ukraine is just one consequence of the West’s inability – refusal, really – to accept reality. For perhaps understandable reasons, earlier this century we tried to make nice with both China and Russia. And yes, life would have been so much easier if Presidents Xi and Putin had turned out to be reforming leaders. But that naive hope was the opposite of cost-free. China was actually invited – begged, even – to take ownership of vast swathes of Western infrastructure, and it is only in recent years that governments have woken up to the potentially catastrophic impact that may now have. And when Putin revealed himself to be an expansionist dictator, such as when he invaded Crimea in 2014, we stood and watched as if it was some sort of fait accompli that we could do nothing about, rather than realising that doing nothing about it was a policy choice with disastrous consequences.
The fundamental lesson of the 20th century was that you have to be strong enough to be feared to secure peace (Peace Through Strength, as the Nato slogan used to put it during the Cold War). Instead, we were almost proudly supine, with results that we live with today.
It has probably not escaped you that while I have been focusing on Ukraine and Russia, there is an obvious parallel to this – Israel’s ability to defend itself. Let’s come to that in a moment, because the past few weeks have seen a major development in the war in Ukraine with its brilliant seizure of territory inside Russia, which seems certain to have changed the course of events. Now that Ukraine has shown that it is capable of more than simply delaying the inevitable, it appears that we (that’s the UK, since it’s not yet clear if the US is going to join us) may at last be ready to allow Ukraine to use long-range Storm Shadow missiles to attack targets inside Russia. About time.
Yes, the West came to Ukraine’s aid – the UK more than most. But before we congratulate ourselves, we need to put this in context. The issue isn’t just that we haven’t given Ukraine enough, it’s that we have tied its hands behind its back, all because of fear of Russian reprisals. But in the first 18 months of the war, they threatened nuclear retaliation 38 times. When we gave Ukraine tanks, Putin said Nato bases would now be targeted. (And Storm Shadows have been used to great effect in Crimea, which Putin says is Russian.)
Far from demonstrating Russia’s strength, its invasion of Ukraine has shown how weak it is. After two and a half months Russia has still not managed to push Ukrainian forces out of the Kursk region. The Russian economy is in chaos – interest rates are now 19 per cent and inflation is off the charts. It is now effectively economically dependent on China (and militarily dependent on weapons from Iran and North Korea), which also limits its freedom of action. However much Putin blusters about red lines and hints about using nuclear weapons, the Chinese will not allow it. So let’s please stop hearing any more about the risk of Russian retaliation. The only risk comes from our refusal to let Ukraine do the job of repelling Russia. The future of the century depends on Ukraine.
Ring any bells? You can substitute Israel for much of the above. While Ukraine is fighting Russia on behalf of the rest of Europe’s security, Israel is doing the West’s dirty work fighting Islamists on our behalf. And how do we help them? Not so much by tying their hands behind their backs as attempting to chop them off – by imposing a form of arms embargo, by funding a body that employs terrorists who took part in the October 7 massacre and by acquiescing in arrest warrants labelling Israeli leaders fighting Hamas as war criminals.
Ukraine is a vital strategic interest for the West. So, too, is Israel. The penny has finally dropped over Ukraine. Will it ever over Israel?
