There is a sense of impotent futility to the latest sanctions imposed by the UK on Russia in the wake of the Dawn Sturgess public inquiry report released today.
And it’s not just the UK.
For all Europe’s handwringing, rhetoric and sanctions, Vladimir Putin remains unmoved.
This week, he was more belligerent than ever, warning that while Russia does not want a war, if Europe starts one, it’s more than ready.
Ukraine war latest: Putin says Donald Trump has an agenda
As we approach a fourth year of Russia’s war with Ukraine, the world is operating under new management and new rules, but the penny has not yet dropped in Europe.
The much-vaunted ‘rules-based world order’ is falling apart. America, so long its guardian, has deserted it and is now in league more and more with Russia.
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The Trump administration is more interested in the promise of renewed trading ties and business deals with Putin’s Russia, despite all its murderous faults.
Putin is winning on the battlefield, slowly but steadily, and Ukraine is running out of money. America has turned off the tap and is now acting as an arms dealer, selling Ukraine weapons via Europe.
Ukraine needs in excess of a hundred billion dollars a year to continue fighting. Europe is bickering over how to use frozen Russian assets to fund that.
And there is certainly no sign of European governments biting the bullet and asking taxpayers to do so instead.
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The alternative way of stopping Russia’s grinding advance is sending troops to Ukraine, which remains out of the question.
So for now, we have just words and sanctions instead.
Sir Keir Starmer may wring his hands about the “Kremlin’s disregard for innocent lives” in the wake of the inquiry into Dawn Sturgess’s death in Salisbury in 2018. It holds the Russian leader “morally responsible” for the Skripal poisoning.
But if Europe is not prepared to put its money where its rhetoric and sanctions are, does this add up to much more than posturing?
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European governments have for almost a year seemed in denial, acting like a cheated spouse. As America’s affections for Russia have become more and more obvious, Europe has hoped against hope to win back its partner.
The affair between Trump and Putin is now, it seems, in full sight.
America no longer wants to support either Europe or Ukraine, only to profit from arms sales to the conflict.
Tantalising deals dangled by Moscow are all it takes, it seems, to keep Donald Trump’s interest.
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Substituting impotent sanctions and rhetoric for solid financial support for Ukraine at some point becomes worse than pointless.
It encourages Kyiv to carry on fighting, as Putin put it recently, “to the last Ukrainian” in the mistaken belief that Europe has its back.
The moment of reckoning approaches for Europe, but there is no sign of its leaders accepting that fact.
