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2023-02-24

It now seems to be the sole approved (or at least the default) modus operandi of our government, when it requires to encourage the impression of public support for its insupportable policies.

By evoking our sympathy with the victims, it spuriously seeks to suggest support for its policies.

In this case conflating genuine public sympathy for the victims with support for its deliberate policy of waging a proxy war with Russia in the Ukraine. Yes I have every sympathy with the people affected but I denounce their policy of war with Russia on the grounds of outright fraud.

The Russians made very serious attempts post 2014 to bring peace to the region by negotiating and concluding the first Minsk agreement. When that fell apart they returned to the negotiating table and agreed the Minsk II agreement.

When that too fell apart perhaps due to the West's / Kiev's bad faith, they decided that further negotiation was a waste of time and started military operations (to the evident approval of the citizens of Crimea and the Donbas).

Our government, aided by the complicit media, has since then never deviated from the line that Putin is a mad bad irrational dictator and must be defeated. 

I have listened to what Mr Putin has said at each stage and he strikes me as very calm and rational. The Russian people seem to agree, as he has successfully added many thousands of new troops to his army in very short order and without major disruption.

I have not seen anything approaching rationality from our government, but plenty of provocation of our emotions, and plenty of ill-judged sanctions on Russia which have somehow mostly hit home here and in Europe!

At no stage to my knowledge since the military operations began has our government supported a negotiated agreement between Russia and the current Kiev government - some think they have done the very opposite. They would have been wise to push Zelensky to settle earlier whilst he still had something to offer, but now he has only bad faith to offer and Russia isn't going to stop until it has secured all its objectives, which must include neutralising both the current Kiev regime and the perceived threat from NATO (whether that threat is real or not).

Yet our government persists in fuelling its proxy war with more munitions and now tanks, seemingly oblivious to the obvious danger of retaliation. Do they believe that Russia will never bite back?

I suggest that Russian restraint will not last for ever.

Perhaps the UK government agrees ...