I felt European long before any other identity: Scottish, British, Dundonian, a citizen of the world. This was in the 1970s when the UK joined the EEC and then held a referendum on whether we should stay in. It remains to this day one of the core ways I feel about the world: a citizen of Europe.
In the past few days, I have reflected upon this in response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine and why it feels such a violation, so upsetting, and an attack on all of Europe and democracy everywhere.
The world was turned upside down last week and it is highly unlikely it will ever be the same again. The Russian invasion of Ukraine follows two decades of Putin attacking and repressing neighbouring countries, culminating in the 2008 invasion of Georgia and 2014 attack on Ukraine and ‘annexation’ of Crimea.
This is going to be a challenge to how we see the world. There have been consistent failures in the UK, the West and internationally, which will have to change. For 20 years, there’s been concerted Western appeasement of Putin and Russia â hoping each aggression was a one-off and that the latest will be his last or can be contained to taking slices out of Georgia or the Donbas region of Ukraine. Meanwhile, Western appeasement has been consistently read in Moscow as weakness and a green light to continue.
There is the revelation of the sheer brutality of the Russian elite psyche and how it sees the world. It is a wounded creature which has been outmanoeuvred by the West. On Monday night’s Channel 4 News, Dimitry Suslov, a pro-Putin Moscow-based academic, said to Matt Frei in response to Ukrainian deaths at the hands of the Russians: ‘Why didn’t Americans go home in Iraq in 2003? I’m sorry but we are not living in paradise’. Frei responded: ‘Do the sins of the Americans justify the sins of the Russians committed today?’ Suslov replied: ‘Yes of course they do because Great Powers behave like Great Powers’.
Underneath this repugnant logic sits something which does need spoken about: the damage done to the idea of the West by the actions of the West. The long shadow of the lies of the US and UK, as they made the case for their illegal war in Iraq in 2003 and mission of regime change, still hangs over the world. It does not excuse the actions of Putin or his apologists. It’s just that his Russian expansionism would have been a harder case to make beyond the walls of the Kremlin without the stain of Iraq.
Russia’s reach into Britain
The scandal of the UK Government and parts of British society can be seen in the role of the City of London laundering and hiding in plain sight billions of Russian wealth. Millions are funnelled into the Tories by Russian oligarchs who have conveniently obtained dual nationality, got by buying their new status. There are the Tory leaders, ministers and MPs, who have taken significant amounts of Russian money, giving rich Russians access to those in the highest offices in the land. Hardly surprising then that Tory Governments have until last week not taken Russian money and influence in the UK very seriously.
Large sections of the wealthy parts of the London economy are kept afloat with Russian money â as well as that of the Chinese and various Middle East dictatorships. All of which keeps a small but well-remunerated industry of corporate lawyers, business advisers and PR managers in a lifestyle which they have grown accustomed to without worrying about the ethics. It’s disheartening that, only as a result of the Russian invasion, the government is now seriously considering making it the law that such companies declare when they are acting in an advocacy role for foreign-based citizens or entities.
To add to this, as half a million Ukrainian refugees flee westwards from the warzone, the UK pontificates about how it will take any people. The UK has been dragging its feet, with the UK Home Office showing its illiberalism and lack of compassion, while Priti Patel grandstands to the xenophobic and insular Tory right.
There will be no visa-free system for Ukrainians coming to the UK, unlike Europe which has unconditionally opened its doors. Patel’s supposed liberalisation involves checking Ukrainians by biometric passports for Russian infiltrators who could be a threat to security, when on the latter, she would have been better looking at the Tory benches.
This is on top of the Afghan scandal where the UK Government talked generously, dragged its heels, and left thousands who worked with the UK to the fate of the Taliban. But remember, the Prime Minister’s wife Carrie saw to it that her friend’s charity got all of its pets out of Kabul.
To make matters worse, Patel delayed in the midst of a humanitarian disaster, on the same day the Border and Nationality Bill was going through the Lords and the government, defending a clause making it an offence to help refugees trying to get into the UK by irregular means. That is the face of the UK this government want to present as who we are to the world. They lost in the Lords 204-126: a government defeat of 78, but they will move to overturn this in the Commons.
Putin’s helpers
Beyond this, there are the so called ‘nationalist-populists’ of the hard right â Farage, Marie Le Pen, Berlusconi, Trump and more â who have been eulogising Putin as a leader to be admired. They have, at times, even played pro-Russian propaganda lines which has, since the invasion, left them all exposed, embarrassed and furiously backpedalling.
Trump in the past week has hailed Putin’s ‘genius’ and at the weekend boasted: ‘I stand as the only President in the 21st century on whose watch Russia did not invade another country’. Farage on the day of the invasion blamed the EU and NATO and their eastern expansion for provoking Putin.
Complementing this are the odious forces of a section of the left: George Galloway, the ‘Stop the War’ coalition (a SWP front) and in a corner of his own, Alex Salmond. The left that has aligned with Russia has done so out of a hatred of Western imperialism and a hankering after Soviet nostalgia. The Ukrainian historian Taras Bilous said this week that such a leftist stance represented an ‘anti-imperialism of idiots’.
All of this is going to require a fundamental rethinking of the idea of Scottish independence. Even more, it has to be unequivocal that independence is anchored in the Western military and security architecture. It cannot, as Kenny Farquharson pointed out last week, in any way aid or be perceived to aid ‘the kind of destabilisation of the West that Putin wishes to encourage’.
Even writing this brings up deep-seated emotions and feelings about Ukraine and its brave citizens, whose lives and livelihoods have been put at risk in the hands of Putin. This is an existential moment for all of us, a time when we have to think seriously about who we are and what we collectively stand for. All across Europe, people are showing their common humanity, compassion and solidarity. Is it too much to hope that the UK Government could show even a small amount of those qualities?
The betrayal of 1989
Watching last week unfold, I was reminded of the high hopes of 1989: the coming down of the Berlin Wall, the wonderful collapse of the Soviet bloc, the freeing of millions of Europeans from behind the Iron Curtain, and the collapse two years later of the Soviet Union.
Present events do feel like the despotic squashing of those hopes. But such a retreat did not begin a few days ago and nor is it just the responsibility of Putin. Instead, there has been a long tail of betrayals of the hopes and dreams of freedom in 1989.
Kleptocratic capitalism took root in Russia and Eastern Europe, aided by Western consultants and advisers, who then found safe havens for its extracted billions in London and the West. This was linked to the false dawn of liberal globaiisation peddled by Tony Blair and Bill Clinton, which saw free market capitalism and the cause of liberty as one and the same thing, and in so doing, tainted and diminished the latter. Added to this was the West’s hubris and over-reach in the killing fields of Iraq, launching an illegal war on a false prospectus and leaving the Middle East in turmoil.
We in the West need to have a serious reckoning with our failures and our collusion in creating the monster that is Putin and the system which supports him. We need to wake up and recognise that appeasement of dictators never works and instead leads to them wanting more. We have to stand against the forces of fascism and those who seek to excuse them and their authoritarian ways.
The Russian assault on Ukraine is an assault on democracy. It is not just going on in Ukraine, but in all of Europe and the world. As one Ukrainian said at the start of this week about Putin: ‘We are all the enemy’. They are right.
This is a time for international solidarity and action. This is a moment with similarities to the Spanish Civil War and the attack by fascists on a democratically-elected government. The fascists cannot be allowed to succeed this time. If, in Putin’s eyes, ‘we are all the enemy’, we have to respond with certainty that ‘we are all Ukrainians’ and that this is our frontline as well.