I hope Peter Hitchens and other Western admirers of Russia’s ‘strong leader’ ‘committed to upholding conservative values’ are happy now.
Before they rejoice though, they ought to scrub themselves clean of innocent blood spattering all over them.
For, but for the West’s criminally craven and feebleminded response to Putin’s aggression against the Ukraine, the 298 victims, a third of them children, would still be alive.
It’s the West I hold responsible, for blaming Putin is like blaming bloodhounds for chasing rabbits. That’s what they do. That’s what they are.
The evil leader of an evil state will commit evil acts, that’s the inviolable rule. The scale of such acts doesn’t depend on how evil he is: evil is absolute and unquantifiable.
The enormity of an evil leader’s behaviour depends on two variables only: what he feels he needs at the moment and what he thinks he can get away with.
In 1999 Putin felt he needed a second Chechen war to solidify the KGB hold (and specifically his own) on Russia. The ledger sheet shows 250,000 murdered Chechens, Russians and whomever else was in the vicinity.
Then he needed to extinguish the inchoate liberties the Russians had enjoyed for a few years. He needed to turn the country into the kleptofascist monstrosity, the greatest-ever gangster syndicate so beloved of Peter Hitchens and other Useful Idiots Mark 2.
To that end he stamped out the free press, having dozens of recalcitrant journalists murdered without even a Stalinist travesty of trial.
The ledger sheet is short compared to Putin’s quarter-million victims in Chechnya, but he didn’t need anything bigger to achieve his aim. Doesn’t matter whether it’s millions or dozens. Whatever it takes.
When in 2006 the KGB defector Litvinenko threatened to publish compromising documents, he was murdered in the middle of London. Just one man, but on that particular day Putin didn’t need to murder anyone else.
The West’s response to those, and many other, atrocities was that of avuncular bemusement.
Regrets were expressed that the birth pains of Russian democracy were lasting longer than ideally expected. Sympathy for the victims was felt. Confident hopes for the speedy advent of Russia’s liberal future were expressed.
Otherwise it was business as usual.
The criminal regime was allowed to build up its military and financial muscle by flooding Europe with its oil and gas. Russian thugs, acting as Putin’s proxies, were allowed to turn Western capitals into laundromats for purloined wealth. Putin’s poodles were buying up Western estates, newspapers and football clubs – no one minded. Blood may smell, but money doesn’t.
It doesn’t take much for a murderous ghoul to develop a sense of impunity. Just like his Soviet predecessors justifying their monstrosity by appealing to the wicked myth of communism, Putin ran up on his mast the flag of a holy Russian empire and blew the bugle of conquest.
He needed the Ukraine because no Russian empire can ever be truly imperial without it. And he knew he could get away with boldfaced aggression – hadn’t the West allowed him to get away with everything else, including nuclear terrorism on its territory?
Hence the rapid annexation of the Crimea by Putin’s storm troopers armed, trained and led by Russian officers courtesy of the KGB/FSB and GRU good offices.
Hence also the subsequent attempt to gobble much of the Ukraine’s territory, specifically the part containing most of the country’s industry and natural resources.
The West’s response to this warmongering in the heart of Europe? Typically resolute. A dozen or so of Putin’s poodles were barred for a while from befouling Zurich banks and Côte d’Azur beaches.
The Western press has happily ceded the lexical ground to the kleptofascist monster. Russian paramilitaries led by Russian officers and wholly reliant on Russian arms, training, communications and logistics are being described as ‘separatists’ and ‘rebels’, half a step short of ‘freedom fighters’.
Like Dutch papers referring to the Muslims’ recent anti-Semitic riot in Paris as ‘friction between two groups’, such misleading terminology implies a certain parity, not to say barely veiled sympathy for the aggressor.
The BUK SAM launcher (‘Grizzly’ in Nato nomenclature) used to shoot down Flight MH17 is as Russian as the Sukhoi fighter-bomber that shot down Korean Flight 007 in 1983.
The troops that perpetrated this crime are neither ‘rebels’ nor ‘separatists’. They are the paramilitary extension of Russia’s armed forces. Their commander is Igor Girkin (aka Strelkov), the GRU colonel extensively trained by the KGB/FSB.
Apparently they mistook the Boeing 777 for a Ukrainian transport plane An-26. That’s a hard mistake to make, considering that the An-26 is half the size of the 777 and that the BUK radar is programmed to distinguish friend from foe.
But, considering that Putin’s proxies are hastily trained paramilitaries, it’s conceivable that they indeed misread the radar.
The communications intercepts certainly suggest this is what happened. At first, Girkin-Strelkov and his henchmen danced with joy, screaming “We downed a plane!” (naturally in Russian, not Ukrainian).
When they realised what kind of plane they had downed, their immediate reaction was expressed with a vile Russian expletive for which there’s no equivalent in English. Then Strelkov tweeted “We warned you – don’t fly in our sky”.
I don’t know whether they did or not issue such a warning, but in either case Malaysian Airlines displayed criminal negligence in choosing a flight path over a combat zone. They aren’t the only one: many reputable companies, including Air France, don’t mind overflying eastern Ukraine on the way to the Far East.
Giving it a wide berth would burn more fuel, eating into the airlines’ already slim profit margins. What’s risking a few lives compared to losing money? If, following Putin’s attempted anschluss, the West didn’t boycott Russia for fear of having to pay more for gas, why can’t Western airlines risk lives to save a few pennies on fuel?
All this is highly predictable. What took even me by surprise, and I harbour no illusions about Putin’s Russia, was the astonishing cynicism and stupidity of Putin’s response to the crime his lads had committed.
He didn’t bother to deny that the airliner had been shot down by his paramilitaries. However, according to the KGB colonel, it wasn’t their fault: “Certainly, the state over whose territory it happened is responsible for this terrible tragedy.”
Precisely. ‘It happened’ over Russian-held territory whose independence from the Ukraine has been proclaimed by the Russian paramilitaries.
And the Korean Flight 007 was shot down over Russian territory, yet Putin’s sponsoring organisation is still denying Russia’s culpability. Evidently the principle of geographic responsibility is highly selective. (In both instances, the Russians lied that the airliners were on a spying mission.)
“This tragedy would not have happened,” continued Putin, “if there was peace in the country, if military operations had not resumed in the south-east of Ukraine.”
In other words, it’s the fault of the country that has the gall to resist being occupied and annihilated by Putin’s proxies. How dare they? Most uncooperative, that.
‘This tragedy would not have happened’ if Putin’s Russia hadn’t committed an act of aggression against a sovereign state.
It would not have happened if Putin’s regime didn’t seek to perpetuate its power by appealing to the Russians’ well-documented delusions of grandeur springing from a richly justified sense of historical inferiority.
It would not have happened had the West understood the kleptofascist nature of Putin’s regime and stopped it in its tracks.
It would not have happened if the West still had the mind to tell good from evil and the moral strength to resist the latter.
And it would not have happened if the West had fewer useful idiots misreading Putin’s Russia as disastrously as they had earlier misread Lenin’s and Stalin’s.
Peter Hitchens and his ilk ought to be ashamed of themselves.