Mary Dejevsky

The West is doing Putin’s work for him

(Getty)

Ukraine, as is periodically observed, means borderland. Geography will forever influence its destiny as an independent state. With tensions between East and West again rising, however, Kiev might well conclude that Ukraine is more accurately translated as ‘on the margins’.

Foreign leaders and ministers have, to be sure, been punctilious in making courtesy visits to President Zelensky and his team before or after paying court to President Putin in Moscow. But it must now be crystal clear to Kiev that — in a conflict essentially centred on Ukraine, though actually about much more — its western champions have at best considered Ukraine’s interests as secondary to the pursuit of the main quarrel with Russia, often not considering them at all.

How else to explain the flurry of developments over the past week? As Volodymyr Zelensky pressed on heroically with his message of keeping calm and carrying on, and most Ukrainians — quite astonishingly — did just that, the US and the UK together amplified their warnings of a Russian invasion. It is now not just ‘imminent”, apparently, but scheduled for as early as Wednesday.

Nor did they stop at upping the already heated rhetoric, which had been briefly paused at the end of January. They passed on to action — action that has a direct impact on Ukraine. Both countries extended their previously announced withdrawal of diplomats, adding calls for all US and UK nationals to leave Ukraine while there were still commercial routes out. ‘Remember Kabul airport?’ Asked the UK’s second-in-command at the Ministry of Defence, James Heappey, during an interview on the BBC Today programme. Well, he went on, the Taliban had had no airpower to speak of; imagine how it could be with missiles and the like. Oh, and by the way, he strongly inferred, the RAF won’t be risking their lives to get you out.

It is hard to believe that any of this is in the West’s interests

A dozen countries have now instructed or recommended their nationals to leave.

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