ONLY £13.90

On Saturday 16 June 2001, at Brdo Castle in Slovenia, US President George W. Bush described his first meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

“I looked the man in the eye. I found him to be very straightforward and trustworthy. We had a very good dialogue. I was able to get a sense of his soul; a man deeply committed to his country and the best interests of his country.”

Bush’s remarks were made near the end of a joint press conference, following an afternoon of constructive talks. That there was a genuine potential for the two leaders to develop friendly ties is exemplified by another of Bush’s ruminations:

“The president told me something very interesting. He said, I read where you named your daughters after your mother and your mother-in-law. And I said, yes, I’m a great diplomat, aren’t I? (Laughter.) And he said, I did the same thing. (Laughter.) I said, Mr President, you’re a fine diplomat, as well. We share our love for our families. We’ve got common interests. And from that basis we will seize the moment to make a difference in the world. That’s why he ran for the presidency, and it’s why I ran for the presidency.”   

To cap off a seemingly auspicious day, Bush invited his Russki counterpart to his ranch in Crawford, Texas, and got an invitation to stay chez Putin in return.

It’s a matter for deep regret therefore, that in the long run, not even these niceties made up for the fiendishly anti-Russian speech Bush gave in Warsaw the day before. ‘Fiendish’ because it contained a Catch-22 which Bush is unlikely to have picked up; despite his being a “history major” (as he said at the same post-summit presser). What has to be borne in mind is that forceful arguments for both NATO and EU expansion were central themes of the speech as a whole.

“No more Munichs. No more Yaltas.”

Although these ‘prohibitions’ look like a pair, they carry crucially and fundamentally different implications in this context. From Germany’s point of view, “No more Munichs” means:

“Never again will a murderous dictator in Berlin have a say in Europe-wide security arrangements.”

It does not mean: “Never again will Berlin have a say in Europe-wide security”, because Germany is a privileged member of NATO and the EU.

In contrast however, from Russia’s perspective, “No more Yaltas” doesn’t only mean:

“Never again will a murderous dictator in Moscow have a say in European security”.

Since Russia is functionally excluded from NATO and the EU, it means:

“Never again will Moscow have a say in European security.”

And so, via the big NATO enlargement (including the Baltics) of 2004, in April 2008 there was the Bucharest Summit, at which Ukraine and Georgia were promised membership. Even that might have been OK, if the West hadn’t instigated the violent overthrow of Ukraine’s democratically elected government on 22 February 2014. In an infamous conversation recorded sometime in the weeks beforehand, Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland could be heard telling US ambassador to Ukraine Geoffrey Pyatt:

“I think Yats is the guy who’s got the economic experience, the governing experience…”

Who then became PM of the post-coup regime? Arseny Yatsenyuk, of course. Yats was the guy.

Other senior westerners in the period 2013-14, many of them Washington insiders, bear a heavy weight of responsibility for the current tragedy. But let’s not overlook the record of UK PM David Cameron, and a figure one wouldn’t necessarily think of – Prince Charles, now Charles III. In May 2014, in conversation with a woman whose family had fled to Canada just before the German invasion of Poland, the then-heir apparent offered the following view of Crimean reunification:

“And now Putin is doing just about the same as Hitler.”

On BBC TV last September, Cameron told Laura Kuenssberg about his “audiences with Prince Charles when Queen Elizabeth II was on the throne… to prepare him for taking over from his late mother.” Did those two scallywags hatch a plan whereby Charles would endorse the comparison of Putin’s actions with those of the Führer in World War II? You wouldn’t put it past them.