War

 "What was it like, the atmosphere of those last few days in August 1939, before German tanks and bombers poured into Poland?" I would ask my father. 

"We were resigned to it - wars happen. War broke out in August 1914, then the Bolsheviks invaded in 1920," he replied. Indeed, looking at European history, wars, invasions, uprisings, revolutions, civil wars would punctuate short periods of peace with monotonous regularity.

I was born in the penumbra of war, 13 years after my father and his Home Army comrades were put on trains bound for PoW camps in Germany at the end of the Warsaw Uprising. My mother's experiences as a child deported to a labour camp in northern Russia had an effect on my upbringing. Polish scouts in London, led by men who had fought at Tobruk and Monte Cassino, was paramilitary in nature; we'd drill Polish army drill, sing Polish army songs, and learn fieldcraft.

The Cold War threat of nuclear annihilation was ever-present; I was too young to sense the fear engendered by the Cuban Missile Crisis. Czechoslovakia - the crushing of the Prague Spring - was sad, but at least there was no risk of spill-over. The Protect and Survive era of the mid-1980s, was chilling - there were a few close calls, though we didn't know it at the time. 

The dissolution of the Soviet Union at the end of 1991 heralded what many believed was the End of History - the Evil Empire had crumbled, free-market democracy had triumphed.

The arc of history was tracking upward. Life was getting better. Technology was bringing us new gadgets, opening new horizons and creating a new way of digital living. Had Europe managed to rid itself of the curse of war for good? Serbia, Bosnia - Srebrenica, the bombing of Belgrade - briefly brought back the ghosts of past horrors. But by the middle of the first decade of the new century, with Poland and nine other former Soviet Bloc members inside NATO and the EU, all looked well, even while Putin consolidated his rule over the Russian Federation.

Then we passed a tipping point - and another - and another - and another. Georgia, Litvinenko, Crimea, Syria, Skripal... Obama said 'reset'. The Germans wanted Nordstream 2. And many venal Western politicians were bought by the Kremlin. What have we learnt? Apparently nothing. 

I had been expecting the Russian attack to start at 04:00 on 22 February (22, my father's unlucky number). It didn't happen. The world breathed a sigh of relief - and then 48 hours later it kicked off. 

Today, the world knows what any country once under the Russian heel knows - giving way to Putin only provokes him to further aggression. "You may not think you are at war with Russia - but Russia is at war with you." Until now, Putin has never overtly crossed the West's red lines. He merely pushed the red line ever further and further and further; the West imposed sanctions here and there - but nothing that would halt Putin in his obsessive quest to reconquer lands he sees as lost to Russia as the USSR collapsed.

This time, the world is seeing a European city in flames, Europeans fleeing tanks and bombs - something not seen on this scale since the last weeks of World War 2. The sight of columns of women and children walking towards the Polish border remind me of how my father, his mother and two brothers walked east from Warsaw as German bombs rained down on the Polish capital, panzers approaching from the north and west. My father was 16 then; he died in 2019; few people alive today remember at first hand the horrors of WW2.

Russian oligarch's money has corrupted the British establishment. Parliamentarians, lawyers, accountants, PR firms, estate agents, thought that they could 'civilise' the nouveau-riche Russians, co-opting them as they once had co-opted oil-rich sheikhs and American tycoons. But Putin's oligarchs have strings attached. You are not permitted to be an oligarch in Britain unless you kick back to Putin, and do his bidding. This includes buying up venal British politicians. Don't do as you're told and you wind up as one of the 14 or so Russians who have died in London under mysterious circumstances.

Putin is the quintessential evil KGB villain, brought up in the dark arts of maskirovka, playing by the playbook he grew up with. The playbook of the NKVD - the Holodor, the Great Terror, the Gulag, Katyń. Surrounded by a coterie of yes-men and women, no one dares tell him how futile is his quest to rebuild the USSR. Economically, it has no chance of success. Robbing the country so brazenly is possible only if the people are repressed by brutality. There is no escape - entrepreneurs are shaken down, and so their ranks are thinned out; the same people who would have the resourcefulness to start small businesses in the West just take the view that the risk is too great. Better be an official and live by shaking down citizens - traffic cops, hospital administrators, health & safety inspectors, granters of planning permissions, tax inspectors, university admissions officer. Run this way, the Russian economy could never lift off and hold its own in the modern world.

Failing to turn Russia into a genuinely modern economy, all Putin can do is to wreck the socio-economic systems of other countries. Had Russia made the right policy and political choices, it could have been a powerhouse, driven by foreign investment and innovation. As it is, ordinary Russian look longingly across at former Soviet republics in the EU - the freedom, the quality of life, sanctity of private property based on the rule of law, prospects for the future. This is a threat to Putin; repression can only go so far. 

Trump's election and Brexit were both supported massively by Russia - using all forms of 'active measures'; financially, through their 'useful idiots', and by an online onslaught using social media, the West's soft underbelly. As bombs rain down on Kyiv, the main proponents of Brexit are today acting as the Kremlin's apologists  in the UK - 'the West's fault for poking the bear' (N. Farage). [As an aside, can you imagine an organisation called Conservative Friends of Germany active in Westminster in the late 1930s?]

This time last year:
Yes, there is such a thing as Original Sin

This time three years ago:
London's Smithfield Market

This time four years ago:
Mid-winter in late February

This time five years ago:
Ten years of digital photography

This time six years ago:
Between atheism and creationism

This time seven years ago:
A peek into the Afterlife

This time eight years ago:
The new dupes of Moscow

This time nine years ago:
Late-winter commuting, Jeziorki

This time ten years ago:
My Nikon D80 five years on

This time 11 years ago:
My Nikon D80 four years on

This time 12 years ago:
Nikon D80 two years on

This time 13 years ago:
Nikon D80 one year on