Regular readers will know that this blog is highly critical of Cameron’s position over the Ukraine and in particular his clumsy attempts to influence Russia’s President Putin. This opposition stems not from ideological conviction but from pragmatic analysis of history, diplomacy and the best interests of the UK, Europe and Russia going forward.
Just let us remind ourselves what is happening. Ukraine is one of the very old eastern European territories with a valued and individual culture rooted in centuries past. It has at different times been independent as well as part of Russia and of Germany. Throughout the Soviet era it was part of Russia and Ukrainians saw themselves as Russian. Khrushchev, one of the most dynamic Soviet leaders, was born in the Ukraine. During WWII quite a lot of bad blood developed between west and eastern Ukraine, because many in the west sided with the invading Germans and signed up with the Waffen SS and other repressive Nazi elements.
With the defeat of the Nazis Ukraine returned to the Soviet Empire where it remained until the empire collapsed. It then became independent and did not join the Russian Federation. It evolved into a democracy which was polarised between parties from the east of the country, mainly inhabited by ethnic Russians who still looked to Russia as their cultural and economic partner and who looked east for culture, trade and security, and parties in the west of the country which looked to Europe. A series of bad governments presided over a disunited country. Eventually the lid blew off and the Russian leaning President fled as his government collapsed in the face of street demonstrations and a breakdown in public order. It was replaced by a west leaning coalition containing some really unsavoury far right elements who openly declared their admiration of Hitler and the Nazis.
The ethnic Russians were terrified, Crimea broke away and joined the Russian federation and a separatist movement established itself in the east. Kiev sent in troops and inaugurated civil war. Russia sent weapons, volunteer formations in uniforms without insignia using armour and transport without markings, a device which fools nobody, to enable the separatists to resist. Russia is very nervous about western expansion east and both the EU and NATO have made little conscious effort to allay her fears.
Although Thatcher’s rapport with Gorbachev broke the mould, the British establishment is, and always has been emotionally anti-Russian. In this they are supported by the Royal family who still recoil at the shooting of all their cousins in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yekaterinburg in 1917. Yet the plain fact is Germany would have won, but for the extraordinary Soviet resistance in WWII which cost Russia somewhere between 26 million and 40 million civilian and military dead, depending on the database used. This compares with 183,000 for the US in the Nazi theatre and about 450,000 for the whole British Empire including the Japanese theatre. You need to read these figures twice and let them sink in.
Without the Soviets, Germany would have won the war in Europe. Or if Britain and America had had to go it alone their casualties would have risen into many millions each. Russia took the full brunt of the losses and destroyed the German fighting machine, 90% of whose losses where on the Russian front. This blog therefore finds the comparison that Cameron makes between Putin and the Nazis as impertinent and insulting and demonstrating woeful historical ignorance. It will also achieve nothing useful and represents a childish diplomatic nihilism. I have lived through Chamberlain, Churchill, Attlee, Eden, Macmillan, Home, Wilson, Heath, Callaghan,Thatcher, Major, Blair, Brown and Cameron. Some did better than others, but they were all Prime Ministers who commanded a degree of respect in their own way. Cameron is the only one of whom I am ashamed. Which is a pity because he is basically a good man.
Furthermore if a case is to be made about the illegality of minorities being allowed to join the country of their ethnic origin, Britain is the least appropriate country in the world to make it. British control of Northern Ireland, The Falklands and Gibraltar depends on the principle that these minorities have the right of self determination and referenda conducted which show a majority wishing to be part of Britain are both legal and binding. We cannot thus assert, as Cameron does repeatedly and goads others to follow, that just such votes held in eastern Ukraine by the Russian minority are illegal. This blog does not like humbug either.