What are we going to do about it?

With this question pragmatic Britons tend to interrupt any extended analysis of economic, political, geopolitical or cultural problems.

When the current Ukrainian crisis is the subject of analysis and I’m the analyst, I reply along the lines of a “whiff of Munich in the air”, a phrase used by our Defence Secretary Ben Wallace. Appeasement, I usually say, has never worked as a deterrent to evil regimes.

We need to introduce draconian sanctions on Russia now, for what she has already done, and guarantee even stiffer ones for each incremental step she takes towards the Ukraine. At the same time we must abandon our insanely suicidal energy policy and become self-sufficient, thereby destroying Russia’s exports and, by introducing a trade embargo, also her imports.

The argument that Russia will then begin to sell all her gas to China is refuted by one word: How? To increase the volume of her supplies to China, Russia would have to build a new pipeline, which would take years – especially without the benefit of Western technology. The option of liquefying gas is even more problematic, for Russia’s liquefication technology is primitive.

I could go on, but you get the general idea. Only a show of strength, unity and resolve will stop amoral aggressors. They despise, rather than respect, those who are nice to them.

This sort of mindset, however, is risibly infantile, according to Mark Almond. The crisis can be ended only by an exercise in what he calls in his article “grown-up diplomacy”, which to him is distinct from appeasement.

I happen to know Mark: in 1995 we were both observers at the Byelorussian election. Over dinner in Minsk, I recall outlining to him my understanding of all those glasnosts and perestroikas as merely a transfer of power from the Party to the KGB. Russia, I said, is still as dangerous as before or, because we don’t realise this, even more so.

Mark looked around furtively, lowered his voice and said: “We can’t say such things. The most we are allowed is a regret that democracy in Russia isn’t developing as fast as we’d wish.”

I thought that was merely typical middle-class fear of expressing strong views. But then I saw Almond appear on RT over the years, preaching an accommodation based on mutual understanding. Much as analogies with Munich are overused and often imprecise, I couldn’t help drawing one with a British academic, c. 1938, toeing a similar line on Goebbels’s radio channel.

So what does Almond mean by “grown-up” diplomacy? It starts with empathy, feeling Russia’s pain.

“We… have to recognise the anxieties of ordinary Russians. Of course, Nato has no intentions of provoking war with Russia – but both the 19th and 20th centuries saw full-scale European invasions through Ukraine, aimed at Moscow. Both Napoleon in 1812 and Hitler in 1941 failed, but the wars left deep scars in the national psyche.”

I’m amazed he didn’t count among the deep scars those left by the 1240 Mongol invasion. The scars he did mention, especially the second lot, are made to fester by incessant, round-the-clock Russian propaganda using them to explain the backwardness of the economy and to justify further aggression against neighbours.

Having thus accepted the stigmata of Putin’s suffering, Almond then proposed his grown-up solution: “Kiev [must] agree to local self-government in the Donbas region. It… might satisfy Russia while leaving Ukraine legally intact and give a beleaguered nation a chance to rebuild its economy.”

Vidkun Quisling couldn’t have put it better. Almond’s grown-up idea is exactly what Putin wants, what his propagandists have been demanding at an increasingly hysterical volume. For, rather than “leaving Ukraine legally intact”, this development would put paid to her as a sovereign country.

The Donbas region was occupied by mercenary bandits Putin armed and used as his proxies. They were led by Russian murderers-for-hire, such as Strelkov-Girkin and ‘Motorola’, and I suggest Almond look them up to understand the situation better (provided that’s what he is after).

Putin is demanding that Kiev recognise the Donetsk and Lugansk provinces as independent precisely because he knows this would inject lethal poison into the country’s body politic. As an immediate effect, it would invalidate the Minsk Accords, held as Holy Writ by Putin and his fans. Hence one has to question either the sanity or the honesty of any Western commentator who goes along with that scheme.

Almond is in good company there. Yesterday the communist faction in the Duma submitted an address to Putin, calling for recognition of the two occupied provinces as independent republics.

Almond then goes on to explain “how wretched, criminal and lawless the Ukrainian economy has become… So much money has been sucked out of the system by successive presidents, cronies and mafia bosses [that the people are still poor].”

All this is true, and I had the chance to observe it when doing consultancy work in Kiev in the late 1990s. But this truth, word for word, equally applies to Russia herself and indeed to most, if not all, ex-Soviet republics. Does this mean we ought to sit back and watch Putin rebuild the Soviet Union by force? That’s what Almond must have in mind, for otherwise this information would be irrelevant to his subject.

Another grown-up solution would be to listen to “Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky [who] pleaded with our Prime Minister to crack down on stolen Ukrainian funds flowing through London.”

Stolen Russian funds flowing through London are greater than Ukrainian ones by orders of magnitude. If we cracked down on those, that would act as an effective deterrent… but I forgot. Doing that to Ukrainians is grown-up; doing that to Russians is childish.

“The West has to recognise how wrong we were to shore up Ukraine’s successive shaky and corrupt governments…,” continues Almond. “At the same time, we have to pander to Putin’s ego and let him claim some sort of victory, without betraying Ukraine’s essential rights… The alternative is almost too awful to contemplate.”

Allow me to paraphrase by excising Aesopian phraseology while keeping the real meaning intact: “The West has to recognise how wrong we were to support, however meekly, the right of nations to self-determination in general and the Ukraine’s sovereignty in particular. Since the only alternative to this recognition is war, we must pander to Putin’s ego and let him claim victory by allowing him to gobble up the Ukraine — for starters.”

Reading this, the KGB colonel must be laughing all the way to the bank. For, even without a full-scale invasion, he has already scored a victory, as denominated in US dollars.

The oil price has climbed to $98 a barrel, a seven-year high. The price of gas is shooting up even faster. The trade in those commodities is in Russia totally controlled by Putin and his cronies. Their kleptofascist regime has thus found that, by ratcheting up the -fascist part of that designation, they can boost the klepto- part no end.

Moreover, any crippling sanctions will also hurt the West, especially Europe, and not only by making energy even dearer. For many European countries have foolishly allowed themselves to be exposed to Russian banks.

In the third quarter of last year, Italy and France were each owed $25 billion, and Austria $17.5. Cutting off Russia from SWIFT, which is one sanction widely mooted, would mean instant default on those loans.

My solution to that problem would be to confiscate all Russian ill-gotten assets held in the West. But, having read Almond’s prescriptions, I realise I still have a lot of growing up to do.

P.S. Here’s an example of Russia’s own grown-up diplomacy. When the other day a local paper asked Tatarintsev, Russian ambassador to Sweden, about the possibility of sanctions, he replied: “We shit on Western sanctions.” This is consonant with Putin’s inaugural promise to “whack terrorists wherever they hide, even in the shithouse.” Freud would have a field day with these excremental allusions.