Putin’s war in Ukraine is a defining struggle for freedom as Russia threat grows – Bernard Ingham

Ukraine: Why sanctions alone won’t stop Putin’s war as Nato faces prospect of military conflict with Russia – Andrew Vine

I am moved to join the philosophers by the agony of Ukraine. The whole of the free world must wish that they would show the same determination, passion and courage if their freedom were threatened.

Ukraine’s gallantry is proving very revealing.

First, it has exposed Vladimir Putin’s insecurity. His failure to overrun Ukraine has advertised the limitations of his feared war machine.

It has also demonstrated that many of his fellow citizens object to his warmongering.

Thousands have been arrested for opposing the war and new opponents keep appearing on his ever more rigidly controlled media.

His obsession with recovering – and extending – what he regards as the lost Russian empire is not shared by an unquantifiable section of Russians, some of whom are joining the refugee queue.

Worse still, a lot of them know that he has left them a pariah state systematically excluded from dealings with the free world.

What sort of future does this isolation hold for them?

If he is allowed to survive, the only honest answer is a totalitarian version 
of Winston Churchill’s “blood, toil, 
tears and sweat” amid international disgrace.

But he has dropped another clanger in the eyes of China, which shares his ambition to rule the world.

His invasion of Ukraine has evoked a response from the free world that he – and they – probably never expected in view of our concern to maintain peaceful co-existence.

It may be that the West’s failure to keep up its defences and its general disorganisation encouraged Putin to go to war.

But it has responded pretty impressively – and none more impressively than Boris Johnson – to his aggression.

It has also done so in a measured way, bearing in mind his irresponsible threat to use nuclear weapons.

The French president, Emmanuel Macron, remains a loose cannon with his constant bickering about the British and his federal passion for a European army that could only weaken Nato.

Another term of Macron may be more than the EU can stand.

But the real problem for the future, if Putin is still a cross the world has to bear, is to prevent him from getting his way by continuing to hold out the prospect of a nuclear Armageddon.

That is a measure of his menace if he does not fall to a military coup.

It may be less of a problem to maintain the West’s resolve effectively to defend its freedom in spite of the economic privation about to hit us all with one pest – Putin – following another in the form of Covid.

We have no excuse, knowing now the warped nature of the Russian leader and the more subtle threat posed by the Chinese.

But let us not assume the West – or the British – are of one mind.

Governments will have to fight to modernise their defences with national finances ravaged by Covid.

This is because all Western societies have a soft underbelly constituted in the British case by militant trade unions, national institutions, including even the defence establishment, with their obsession with “inclusivity”, universities and the infinite variety of ‘wokery’ that continues to despair us.

While Ukrainians have continued their desperate fight for independence, we have had Tube workers causing chaos in London – as if there were not enough as a result of the mayor’s drive to narrow roads in the name of climate change.

Then we have had a new menace – Tyre Extinguishers – letting down the tyres of so-called Chelsea tractors because they are allegedly more polluting than the average vehicle.

This is not to mention the propensity of Extinction Rebellion and Insulate Britain for blockades – all in the name of reducing greenhouse gas emissions while actually increasing them.

If we have learned anything about ourselves over recent months, it is that some Britons are just as much fanatics as Vlad the Bad.

Theirs may not be a hot war but it is war nonetheless against a society weakened by Covid and threatened by Putin.

Britons would really know that 
they’re protected by freedom if strikes were outlawed in the public sector so our citizens can enjoy a free passage going about their lawful business. That’ll be the day.

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