Putin may be a gangster, but he is not a discourteous one. He waited until after breakfast before ordering his troops into the Ukraine, thus giving the UK media time to catch up with the further confirmation HM is performing "light duties" because she has Covid; the news university undergraduates will definitely require a pass in GCSE Maths and English before taking up their studies; the revelation that Storm Algernon- Percy overturned two ice cream vans in Doncaster and that Emily Maitlis, John Sopel, Eddi Mair and Andrew Marr are leading a brain drain from the BBC.
Notwithstanding the news of these defections, three hours later it was reassuring to see business as usual at "our" national broadcaster. There was Clive Myrie and team stolidly attempting to keep us all abreast of the new war on the fringes of eastern Europe in the tedious longueurs of the twenty-four hour news cycle. Clive was perched atop some high rise in central "Keeeeve" while Steve Rosenberg fronted from Moscow (or should that be "Moskva"?). Given the hysteria in the financial markets and the footage of things going bang in ploughed fields and on airport runways, Clive seemed to be taking it all pretty calmly. Indeed, not even the insistence of his director that he put on body armour lest he be scraped by some dis-obliging fragment of Russian ordnance knocked his somnolent composure. Hand in pocket and stifling a yawn, he "interviewed" the Beeb's Lyse Doucet. Like her colleague Orla Guerin, the BBC's chief international correspondent has been schooled in the technique of using arresting clichés to disguise the fundamental lack of useful information about the "hot spots" from which she reports, usually long after the bombs have dropped. In the world according to the Beeb, everything always seems to happen "by dawn's early light". Victims are always "hoping against hope", or have "wearily walked too many miles to count" but no-one interviewed ever seems to use expletives, 'though they may have been shot, blown up, maimed or ethnically cleansed.
Lyse's piteous analysis included a riff on "Keeeeve's" air-raid warning system, "a siren that has entered the lives of everyone in the Ukraine" and opined that things have not been this serious since WWII. Various hardy souls were interviewed going about their daily business, but it did not really look or feel like the morning of Barbarossa. Clive nodded sagely before languidly handing back to Thomas in London to tell us about today's weather. Standing in front of an enormous map of a frontal system in Ukraine's national colours of blue and yellow, the Beeb's weather pixie looked appropriately grave and warned us of a hot air pressure system blowing in from the west, as apt a metaphor as any for the official reaction to Putin's act of aggression.
For has not the Russian leader played a complete blinder, irrespective of the merits of his murderous case? The collapse of NATO's campaign in Afghanistan and steady and lengthy erosion of western Europe's military capability and preparedness told him all he needed to know about the likely force of the response to his invasion. Nor has the threat of economic sanctions been a deterrent: Putin has built up an impressive war chest of foreign exchange reserves; the Russian national accounts are in better shape than almost anyone else in the G7, and he has secured his eastern flank by putting his arm around the shoulder of China. Most important of all, Russia has found itself in the fortuitous position of being the marginal supplier of Europe's energy needs, in which scenario the UK (which is at the end of a very long distribution system), is looking particularly vulnerable to a market shock. The cost of Europe's ill-considered zero carbon strategy and of its complacency about energy security is now rising very rapidly.
In contrast to Putin's insolent display of confidence, the response from most of the capitals of western Europe has been both embarrassing and slow footed, none more so than in London. This is a crisis that has been building for years not weeks, and naturally it is all a bit too difficult for much of the British media to get its head around. Cartoon villains like Roman Abramovich have come in for censure - why can't Boris confiscate Chelsea FC and a few penthouses in Knightsbridge or "cancel" the playing of the Champion's League in St Petersburg? Let's "stop" the Russian money that has hoovered up so many of "our" high end assets. It is an almost risible strategy, yet the government has begun to execute. Even the "quality" press has got itself into a total muddle, with David Aaronovitch of the Times sententiously dismissing all those who have tried to warn about the impending debacle as if they were somehow Putin's collaborators.
Putin's "useful idiots" are, by contrast, those retired armchair warriors who are now demanding that NATO's "ramparts be defended". But the horse has long since bolted. The UK's defence secretary might chortle on camera about the Scots Guards giving "Tsar Nicholas I a bloody nose in the Crimea", but he has overseen plans to run down the army's strength to below 80,000 personnel, its lowest level of manning since the 17th century. Germany is in an even worse place. Conducting exercises in 2020 with wooden rifles, the chief of the German General Staff has taken to social media to expose the utter lack of preparedness of the Bundeswehr. Yet Ursula von der Leyen at the EU says that the organisation is standing "shoulder to shoulder" with the Ukraine. Who are these people trying to kid?
The level of stupidity, hypocrisy and ignorance amongst our political leaders and government officials is alarming. In modern history, Russia has been on the receiving end of four major invasions from the west: an amateurish assault in the Crimea in the 1850's; the attack of the Central Powers in 1914; the intervention by the allies on the side of the "White Russians" following the 1917 Revolution, and the absolutely murderous attack by the Germans in 1941. Armed with that history, one might have thought western statesmen would appreciate the extreme sensitivity of the Russians about their security. Indeed, did not George Bush (Snr) promise Gorbachev that there would be no expansion of NATO's frontier following the collapse of the Warsaw Pact? But who now cares (or even knows) about that? Au contraire, our leaders thought it would be a brilliant idea to co-opt the Ukraine as a NATO member, thus taking the western alliance up to almost the most eastward line of the German advance in 1942. Putin has only made good on a reaction that he has threatened for a very long time, and the declaration by the Ukrainian president (a former stand- up comedian) that his country would make alliances with whomsoever it damned-well pleased was the final straw.
Watching an increasingly doddery President Biden stumble over his "outrage" at the invasion made one almost yearn for the diplomatic skills of Donald Trump. At least that oddly coiffured narcissist realised the limits of American power and tried to "cut a deal" where he knew the USA was at a disadvantage. Yet the official liberal establishments of the west remain wedded to "standards" that they cannot credibly uphold at home while trying to impose them on everyone else. So while the US was defunding the police and "taking the knee", Germany was mobilising papier mache helmets and broomsticks, and the UK was trying to decide if its male soldiers could have a cervix, Putin was getting busy.
It's obvious Russia's leader can't take our own leaders seriously: maybe he has a point.
