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| The ubiquitous yellow and blue flag of Ukraine |
What is the connection between Vladimir Putin's invasion or Ukraine - for it is very much his project - and the Post Office scandal in which many sub post-masters were unjustly convicted of fiddling the books by a faulty computer system? It is that you cannot expect the state to control matters with fairness and decency. The state itself is neutral and has no conscience.
This is what struck me about the Post Office scandal. And it is a scandal. Hundreds of sub-postmasters were cut adrift by an organisation they would have expected to back them up. A faulty computer system was installed and they were forced to take the blame when money went missing despite it obviously not being their fault. Many paid with prison sentences, broken marriages, bankruptcy and even suicides. And what punishment did the bosses get? Nothing.
The magazine Private Eye backed up the sub-postmasters but there was a deafening silence from Fleet Street and the mainstream media until the brown stuff hit the fan, when they showed a belated interest. There were no big names or celebrities attached to a high profile campaign in their favour and nobody seemed to care about them except for an independent magazine.
Thank God for a free press. No such thing exists in Russia, the last non-state controlled television station having been closed down and journalists facing fifteen years in prison for even calling Putin's invasion of Ukraine a 'war'. A few thousand brave souls have gone out onto the streets to demonstrate but they can expect little mercy from the justice system in Russia.
Putin and his wife wedding photo
I blame divorce for a lot of the problems with Putin. He ditched his first wife ten years ago and has not replaced her but had various mistresses since. There is no-one at home to say to him, "Vladimir, this invasion of Ukraine is a stoopid idea which the Russian people do not want, I am sure. Mark my word, it will end in tears." Advisers cannot afford to talk with that sort of honesty.
Putin has surrounded himself with flunkeys and yes men. One columnist wrote that, if he was an advisor to the Russian president, he would think very carefully about what advice he gave to him lest he incur his displeasure. There is something ironical about a country that promotes the idea that the state is all-powerful being run by one man whose whims are like laws of iron while the west, which promotes the individual, relies far more on a group acting together.
We are between a rock and a hard place with Putin. If we provoke him too much, there is a real chance he will unleash nuclear weapons. If we cave in to him, he will simply continue with his aggression until we belatedly try and stop him. Think Hitler and Chamberlain, whose reputation has been partially rescued by Robert Harris and the book he wrote about the Munich agreement. We may call it 'a piece of paper' but it bought us an extra year before war inevitably arrived.
'War' was inevitable once Putin decided to take over Ukraine to stop it falling into the hands of the west. He may not want me to call it that but I am not facing fifteen years behind bars for doing so. Try telling the parents of the children killed by Russian missiles that they are not engaged in a war. Try telling the Russian soldiers killing, being killed or surrendering.
The only hope is that, when the body bags start returning to Russia with the corpses of young soldiers inside them, the people of Russia will turn against Putin and he will have lost so much support that the end is inevitable. A tyrant is only as strong as the support he enjoys in his country and it is not the intellectuals who will bring down the dictator but the ordinary people.
Will that happen or has Putin's grip on power become so strong that the opposition has been effectively neutralised? Putin shows no hesitation in locking up or murdering those who oppose him and his strength and ruthlessness probably attract enough support for him to survive for the time being but, if his Ukraine invasion fails completely, things may change and do so quickly.
Putin got away with invading Chechnya and virtually flattened the country in subduing it. Russia, however, did not succeed in Afghanistan and its failure there effectively led to the collapse of state run communism to be replaced by a kind of state sponsored kleptocracy. Which way will it go in Ukraine? Most Ukrainians seem to want the freedoms of the west but Putin And Russia want to keep them in the east. At present it does not look good for the eastward facers.
I will not mourn Putin if he is a victim of his own ambition. Russia does not have much of a democratic tradition and seems to prefer being ruled by a strong man. Every strong man, however, has his limitations and I do hope that Putin overreaches himself and falls with an almighty crash to earth (or beneath it). We shall see how it pans out. Watch this space.
Edwin Lerner
My other blog is diaryofatouristguide.blogspot.com
