Putin’s aggression can make clear the scenario for an anti-war motion | Owen Jones
Activists ought to winner Ukraine’s suitable to resist and an intercontinental order primarily based on shared values and peace
Do we at any time discover? Vladimir Putin joins a cast of monsters – from Saddam Hussein to Muammar Gaddafi – who had been as soon as blessed by western patronage. His regime was forged in the ruins of Grozny, and legitimised in the assets portfolios of Highgate and Chelsea. 20-a few several years in the past, the then largely unidentified Putin surfed a nationwide wave of jingoism to come to be Boris Yeltsin’s successor, soon after a series of meant terrorist bombings in Russian condominium buildings provided a pretext for the country’s 2nd Chechen war. In no way mind that there is compelling evidence that Russian protection expert services carried out these bombings to present a casus belli for the invasion, by no means intellect that tens of countless numbers of Chechens were being slaughtered amid horrendous war crimes: Putin was lauded and embraced.
The previous MI6 chief, Sir Richard Dearlove, expressed his regret in 2018 for our safety services’ function in Putin’s rise to energy, which includes the time Tony Blair was provided up to the Russians for a image op in 2000. The pursuing calendar year the previous prime minister also drew parallels in between Chechnya and the west’s “war on terror”. Putin’s descent into unapologetic authoritarianism did not direct Blair to revise his viewpoints – as a substitute, he urged the west to set aside its displeasure at the annexation of Crimea in 2014 to ally with Putin from “radical Islam”, a plea he repeated in 2018, just 3 months after the Salisbury poisonings.
Owen Jones is a VFAN columnist
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