Is Putin Really the Enemy?

I have been lucky. I’ve only been invaded once in my lifetime, and that was by my own Government. They sent their goons and Goebbels into my life and my home, put me under house arrest, and threatened me with life-changing fines and are still threatening me with incarceration if I mutter views contrary to theirs wherever anybody can hear or see.

Putin hasn’t tried to invade Britain – yet! So forgive me if the two minute hate hasn’t yet diverted my attention to the forever war being waged by Airstrip One on… I’ve forgotten who it is this week. Oh yes, Putin.

We’ve all been encouraged (strongly) to move on from the Covid era. All wrapped up. Done and dusted. Lessons will be learned.

Yes they will. By me. Ukraine is a sad, bloody distraction from problems closer to home, which will entail some of the previous restrictions being brought back under one guise or other the first chance that ‘they’ get. Covid was, in effect, an exercise. I’m much more worried about my lot than Putin in the near term. But then I never thought he would invade Ukraine, so what do I know? I’m not sure what drove him into this madness unless he’s not quite as strong internally as we are led to think. Galtieri invaded the Falklands because he was on shifting sands at home in Argentina and thought the best way to shore up his position was to venture abroad with his army. How did that end for him? Putin had most of what he wanted just by standing around on the border looking menacing. We will find out eventually, but in the meantime someone who was held in great esteem in his own country and had started to give Russia back a bit of self-confidence and hope appears to have spaffed the lot on an expensive, bloody and largely pointless war.

Let me declare an interest here. I’m fond of Russia and the Russians, with their sardonic brand of cynicism. It’s sort of in their DNA and probably stems from always being serfs to one kind of dictatorship or another throughout history. I’ve been going there, mostly for work, since August 1970, deep in the Soviet era. I was in my early 20s, and it was an adventure. Before we went we had a briefing from the ‘security services’ as to expectations. I was working for a state owned industry, and this was day one of a new agreement between the countries, so we were told that we would be treated as ‘agents of the state’. Followed, spied on in our rooms etc. Indeed we were. It was a game trying to trap the poor sod following you around Moscow. Nipping around corners and waiting flat against the wall as he puffed after you, followed by grins and exchanges of possible courtesies or otherwise in a few languages. I was once given a lift back to my hotel, the Ukraine Hotel as it happens, by the KGB followers. It was midnight in January and I was trying to get back after a night in the American embassy. The guys were in a car, and probably didn’t want to be accused of allowing their quarry to die of cold, so they just pulled up and said ‘get in’ in English. So I did, being mellow at the time. They drove me straight home without asking where, dropped me in front of the hotel and wished me a good night. I offed a few dollars but was turned down. The only time ever my dollars were refused in the Soviet Union.

I returned in 2009 after Putin and the Soviet breakup. I visited the old haunts, and had a coffee in Costa in the New Arbat, because it was such a contrast to my memory of the place. I also took a river cruise down from St Petersburg to Moscow. The locals were joking about the recent past by then. A bus tour in St Petersburg went past the old KGB headquarters. Putin was mentioned, as was the fact that you used to be able to see the snows of Siberia from the third floor if you invited for an interview there. I think it was metaphorical. Putin is an old Petersburg hand, as was his comrade Medvedev. They were taking it in turns to run Russia then before they managed to change the rules. The boat trip came complete with a lady professor of Russian history who lectured us on politics as well. She was available in the bar for liquid interrogation for the whole week. I had a lot of discussions with her about the changes since my Soviet days as we were of an age. Long story short, Putin was very popular then with his population, including the kids they had working on the boat during the university holidays as waiting staff and guides. There was great hope for the future under Putin.

I’m not sure it would be the same now. Everybody must know somebody who has been fed into the Ukraine meat grinder.

I digress. What are we told by our masters, by the Establishment political elites? Putin won’t stop here. He wants hegemony. He wants us under the boot, and we should all be very afraid and keep sending riches to the financial black hole that is Ukraine. What happens to the money after that is not explained. Indeed the escape velocity of money from said black hole would probably get it as far as the Cayman Islands, but no further. It could keep the Guardian’s owner’s tax money company there.

It’s taken three years for Putin to get a few miles inside a run-down country like Ukraine, but the Establishment still pushes the idea that Putin can roll over the rest of Europe like Guderian before he ran out of petrol. Forgive me if a pinch of Siberian salt is taken with that.

Compare and contrast, as they say, with what is happening in our corner of what is laughingly known as ‘the free world’.

That bastion of the democracy, the EU, currently in conniptions over being told its fortune by J.D. Vance, has a ghastly record of interfering in the lives of the ordinary people it rules. EU elites have interfered in election results in Ireland, Hungary, Poland, Slovakia, Italy, Austria, Romania, the Netherlands and more. They have disallowed results electing ‘populist’ parties. They have caused elections to be held again until the right result happens. They have fined or threatened to withhold funds to Romania, who produced the wrong government, and told Austria that it would be thrown out of the EU if the FPO election result wasn’t ‘contained’. The examples are legion. Hungary was made a pariah for democratically voting the wrong way.

And yet it’s Putin we are being told to fear. The likes of Tobias Ellwood keep us in fear on the radio. He’s right about miserable military spending, but wrong about the enemy. But then he is part of the 77th Brigade who demonised dissent during Covid and went after individuals who dared to oppose the establishment. If I’m wrong about him, then you would think he’d have done something about his Wiki entry:

Ellwood served in the Royal Green Jackets and reached the rank of captain. He transferred to the Army Reserve and has gone on to reach the rank of lieutenant colonel in the 77th Brigade.

Mind you, this is what Wiki says about this august organ and its founder:

The Daily Sceptic is a blog created by British commentator Toby Young. It has published misinformation about COVID-19 vaccines and engaged in climate change denial.

The 77th and Tobias E haven’t gone away. Nor has the Blob. Nor has the EU. We are being inched towards reabsorption by a Government who would rather be able to shrug and pass decision-making onto a higher level, ever further away from the demos. The useless EU and its apparatchiks would love to do the same shrug and pass difficult decisions onto a still higher body, ever further away from the electorate. It’s coming. And it’s coming a lot faster than Putin is coming. Ask J.D. Vance.

James Leary is the pseudonym of a retired passenger jet pilot.