Two years ago we all woke up to the awful news that Russia, after lots of menacing, had finally invaded Ukraine. Honestly, not many of us gave the Ukrainians much chance in fending them off. That they are still standing is down to their charismatic leader and a huge international effort.
Ed Davey said:
We stand with all Ukrainians as they bravely and brilliantly resist the Russian war machine.
The UK will continue to aid their fight for their country, for their democracy and for their freedom.
Sarah Green said:
Today we mark the second anniversary of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine (not forgetting the invasion of Crimea in 2014). We must continue to stand with the Ukrainian people – Putin’s aggression cannot be allowed to prevail.
Scottish Liberal Democrat leader Alex Cole-Hamilton is marking the anniversary by urging the UK and Scottish governments to expand their support for the country.
Mr Cole-Hamilton is calling on the UK government to widen sanctions against those on the “Navalny list” and for the Scottish Government to deliver transparency over who owns land in Scotland as well as to support the 1 in 10 Ukrainians in Scotland who remain in temporary accommodation.
At 11am this morning he will lay a wreath at the National War Memorial at Edinburgh Castle to commemorate the Ukrainians who have died in the fighting.
Alex said:
This weekend my thoughts will be with those Ukrainians bravely fighting for their country and its future.
It’s easy to forget but in February 2022 Alex Salmond was still broadcasting on Putin’s propaganda channel and the overwhelming consensus was the Russian troops would be in Kyiv by the end of the week. Instead, the yellow and blue flag of Ukraine still flies proudly.
Two years on, there should be no let-up in British resolve. It is not an act of charity to supply Ukraine with the tools it needs to defeat Putin but one of self-interest: If the Russian dictator is not defeated on the battlefield in Ukraine, we will eventually have to face him again elsewhere.
We should be working with our European allies to increase military support and the UK Government should be delivering tough sanctions on every individual on the Navalny List. They must take action immediately to freeze and begin to seize the assets of anyone found to be one of Putin’s enablers.
For the Scottish Government there is work to be done too. 1 in 10 Ukrainians remain in temporary accommodation and concerns remain that our land registry allows oligarchs to slip under the radar.
My time as a host for Ukrainians fleeing Putin has left a lasting mark. Both of our governments should be doing more to support the people of Ukraine.
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Steve Trevethan
20 Comments
Even at this stage, might negotiation reduce the horrible harms to life, limb, mental health and property?
It could have been over if those who promised military assistance had been more proactive in their support of Ukraine. Instead it has become protracted and the US and Europe have shown themselves to be weak.
Steve Trevethan. I thought we had learned our lesson when it comes to negotiations with dictators. They just come back for more but by then we have been further weakened. We should have stopped him when he took Crimea and parts of Eastern Ukraine but maybe we did not have the means. If you want peace prepare for war. It might be cheaper that way both in terms of loss of life and money.
Steve, on 6 August 2022 you were right: “Why does more blood need to be spilled before starting negotiations?”
Patrick Cockburn today writes in iNews: “Wishful thinking in Western capitals and Ukraine suggested that a brisk counteroffensive in 2023, equipped with much-hyped modern battle tanks, would defeat the Russian army and possibly even bring down Putin’s regime. Since the Ukrainian attack spluttered last summer, it has become conventional wisdom to speak of the war being stalemated, but a stand-off like this seldom lasts long.
Tipping the balance in this case is the growing strength of Russia, with three times the population of Ukraine and five times the battlefront fire power.
‘The war is not trending toward a stable stalemate, but toward Ukraine’s eventual collapse,’ warn George Beeb and Anatol Lieven in a study for the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft”.
Anatol Lieven has also written: “Ever since the issue of Nato expansion first appeared in the mid-1990s, Russian officials, journalists and foreign policy intellectuals have told me that while they did not really care about eastern Europe or even the Baltic states, their fear was that Nato would not know how to stop; and that if it threatened to take in Ukraine, Russia would have to fight.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/feb/23/war-ukraine-russia-threat-europe-rearm-us
On August 17, 2022 Mail Online reported: “The Pope declares the war in Ukraine is driven by the interests of several ’empires’ and not just Russia and that the war was ‘perhaps in some way provoked’ by NATO”. The Pope must see Putin again.
Steve and John, you are right.
Ukraine must be handed over to Putin. Then there will be peace.
Until Putin attacks Moldova (the attack caused by Nato, of course.) But the solution is simple again. Give Moldova to Russia. That is the right and fair thing to do.
Seems Neville Chamberlain still has some followers. Depressing.
Part two of my previous comment:
“U.S. and U.K. leaders have never admitted to their own people what they did, nor tried to explain why they did it.”
https://www.counterpunch.org/2024/02/23/after-two-years-of-war-in-ukraine-its-time-for-peace/
Might our party please tell us if this account has accuracy or find out whether it has accuracy and tell us?
Apologies!
Part one has yet to appear. To save time you can look it up on the attachment. It is a copy of paragraphs 4 and 5.
Dominic, it’s important that we hand over the Baltic States as well and Georgia and Poland.
Otherwise there will never be peace.
And as Steve and John point out so lucidly it’s all Nato’s fault for being such warmongers.
Putin is merely defending Ukraine from Nato aggression. it stands to reason.
@Steve Trevethan. That article you quote looks very twisted to me. The UK and the US did NOT torpedo a peace agreement between Ukraine and Russia: The ‘peace agreement’ that the Counterpunch article refers to was never anything more than a set of proposals being discussed, and there was no way Ukraine would have ever accepted them, no matter what the opinion of the UK and US might have been, since it would have left Ukraine at the mercy of any future Russian aggression, and just caving in was not the mood of either the Ukrainian Government or – so far as we can tell – the Ukrainian people, at that time. The article then becomes absurd when it claims that the US vetoed this agreement. That’s nonsense since even if the agreement had existed in final form (which it didn’t) it would have been an agreement between Ukraine and Russia and therefore up to Ukraine and Russia whether they wanted to sign it.
Chris and Dominic, please read what Patrick Cockburn says.
It is appalling that this state of affairs has been allowed to continue for so long.
It is even more appalling that there are those who take it upon themselves to recycle Russian propaganda. The Tankie tradition is disgraceful. This invasion needs to be repelled and Ukraine by rights should be given the means to take all of it’s territory back.
People on here wax lyrical about American domination. You want to see what Russian domination looks like? Look at Mauriopol.
Europe and the UK should have massively stepped up arms production when this first started. As it is now, Estonia’s ambitious but realistic plan to commit all 54 Ukraine supporting nations in the Ramstein group to give a consistent modest part of their GDP, is probably the most actionable to turn this state of affairs around.
Europe needs to rapidly rearm NOW. Delay will costs lives and bury the rules based order.
Indeed Adam. The question that everyone needs to answer to themselves is quite simple.
Do you believe that Western Liberal Democratic values (imperfect as they are) are worth defending?
First there was the Ruhr, then there was Czechoslovakia (peace in our time), then there was Austria and the there was Poland and the rest is history.
Have Steve, John and Patrick learned nothing from European history in the thirties?
The USA is looking increasingly like an unreliable ally. Whether it’s Ukraine now, Afghanistan in the recent past or probably NATO in the near future, the USA is no longer able or willing to do the heavy lifting. In which context it is worrying to learn that the UK’s so-called “independent” nuclear deterrent is anything but.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/feb/24/failing-british-nuclear-arsenal-reliant-on-the-goodwill-of-donald-rump-is-terrifying-thought
@Jenny Barnes – the situation is not quite as bad as that article suggests regarding the Trident missiles. The British missiles form part of a pool with US missiles that are rotated for refurbishment every 10 years, on a one-in, one-out basis. So it would take longer than weeks for the “independent” deterrent capability to be degraded by an uncooperative US administration, but it could happen over time.
But if relations with the US got that bad, the problem would be far broader than just the deterrent. The UK relies on a lot of US systems and components (eg F-35 jets, Chinook and Apache helicopters, Poseiden and Wedgetail surveillance aircraft, Protector drones) and a hostile US President could use their International Traffic in Arms (ITAR) Regulations to cut us off from spare parts and maintenance support and/or prevent us from re-exporting anything containing US components or technology to Ukraine or other allies. For instance, a victorious Trump backed by a Republican Congress could kill the plan for Ukraine to operate F-16 fighters completely stone dead if he was minded to do so, even if European countries are willing to supply them.
For those who would quote the history of WW2 against negotiation to avoid brutal conflict, here are some points to consider:
1) Nazi Germany was defeated by a combination of the UK, Russia and America etc.fighting together.
2) The allies had troops from all their countries actually fighting.
3) Military supplies from the UK, Russia and the USA were reliable.
Do any of the above apply to the current carnage?
Do we really want NATO (British) troops being, maimed, being driven mad and being killed in Ukraine?
What is unacceptable about the citizens in particular areas deciding to which country they choose to belong?
How likely is the USA to accept Russia associated troops on one of their borders?
As Jenny Barnes asks, how reliable is the U S A as an ally?
@Steve: Citizens being able to choose which country they want to belong to is great! And in that regard, you might note that Ukrainian independence from Russia was determined by a referendum in 1991 in which every region of Ukraine (including Crimea) voted for Ukraine to be an independent country, not part of Russia. Unlike the rigged elections that Putin holds, we have no reason to doubt that referendum was free and fair. So maybe you should ask why Russia doesn’t respect Ukrainian citizens’ rights to decide which country they want to belong to.
Not all wars are like WW2. Some, like Korea, end in stalemate. Others, like Afghanistan, end very badly.
In WW2, the Allies didn’t only reject appeasement. They also fought tooth and nail to win. Is the West giving Ukraine that level of commitment?
Proponents of negotiation do themselves no favours when they are also proponents of defeatism. The starting point for any talks should be the presumption that Putin may be weaker or more scared than he pretends to be, and that he could be looking for an “out” which stops short of his humiliation. The opening gambit should be tough. For example, the scale of war reparations demanded from Russia might be introduced as the issue for negotiation, contingent on Russian withdrawal from Ukraine.
Sure, Putin might very well just scoff. If so, nothing will have been lost. But conceivably, something might have been gained. The Russian conscripts, dying like flies, will have been dismayed to see their leader pass up a chance for peace. Dictators are not immortal or impregnable.
“Not all wars are like WW2”
Very true. Some do end in total victory by one side (The defeat of Carthage by Rome, the Napoleonic wars maybe) but most are settled by some form of peace Treaty.
The Hundred Years War, 1337 -1453, is remembered in Britain (or should I say England?) in terms of victories at Crecy and Agincourt. The final battle at Castillon, a win for the French ruling class against the English ruling class, is much less well known on this side of the Channel. The Treaty of Picquigny in 1475 is regarded as finally putting an end to the hostilities. At least until it all kicked off again the next time!
The war against Russia is unlikely to result in total victory for either Ukraine or the West. It will need to be negotiated. The sooner these negotiations start, the better for all. Especially the conscripts on both sides who are losing their lives as a consequence.