Thirteen years ago, Vladimir Putin went to watch a martial arts tournament and as he congratulated the winner of a heavyweight fight, the unthinkable happened: Much of the crowd began booing and jeering at their shocked leader.
It was the start of a difficult period for the Russian president, as his blatantly rigged elections sparked the country’s biggest protests since the collapse of the Soviet Union. “We are not afraid anymore,” one man told me at a large demonstration in Moscow.
I heard anti-corruption activist Alexei Navalny warn Putin that “if the crooks and thieves continue to try to deceive us and lie to us, we will take power ourselves.” I met other important opposition leaders, such as former Deputy Prime Minister Boris Nemtsov.
Today Navalny is dead, “murdered” a month ago in a penal colony in the Arctic, and Nemtsov was shot in 2015 on a bridge in Moscow, just meters from the Kremlin.
But Putin, after 24 years in power, will secure a fifth term after last weekend’s elections after crushing dissent in his country.
Putin, after 24 years in power, will secure a fifth term after last weekend’s elections after crushing dissent in his country
Yulia Navalnaya, the widow of Alexei Navalny, the Russian opposition leader who died in a prison camp, stands in line outside the Russian Embassy in Berlin, Germany
The petty dictator will claim that the result gives him a popular mandate for his war in Ukraine, a conflict that he expected would end in a lightning victory in just five days, but which has turned into a brutal war of attrition against people who are determined defend their freedoms.
Putin appears untouchable because he has killed, exiled or imprisoned all rivals – including Vladimir Kara-Murza, the dual Russian-British citizen who was given a 25-year prison sentence for “treason” after speaking out against the war – despite the disastrous start to his life. attempted large-scale invasion and the West’s unexpectedly unified response.
He has militarized schools and society as a whole, placed the economy on a war footing, and increased defense spending to the highest levels since the Cold War.
After amending the constitution through a rigged referendum four years ago, he can remain in power until 2036, when he will be 83.
Putin is now also backed by three of the world’s most obnoxious autocracies – China, Iran and North Korea – an alliance that underlines how the war he launched in Ukraine a decade ago with the invasion of Crimea has become a landmark battle between democracy and dictatorship.
And yet the West remains stunningly complacent about the challenge this tyrant poses to our way of life and our democratic values.
The country may have finally united behind Ukraine’s fight for survival in 2022, but many Western leaders were so intimidated by Putin’s saber-rattling that, despite their bold rhetoric, they were too slow to provide sufficient military support, an approach that had tragic consequences had.
One of the worst offenders in the early days of the war was French President Emmanuel Macron, who tried to win over Putin by arguing that Russia should not be humiliated and by limiting France – a major military power – to truly pathetic levels of aid to Ukraine in the field of weapons and ammunition.
Vladimir Putin has won the Russian elections with 87.8 percent of the vote, according to exit polls
The Russian tyrant, 71, has consolidated his position at the top of the Kremlin until at least 2030
Members of a local election committee count ballots at a polling station after the last day of the three-day Russian presidential election in Moscow
Now Macron seems to have woken up. He is boosting defense spending to the highest level in half a century, while doubling the number of reservists, strengthening cybersecurity and dramatically increasing intelligence funding.
The French president has even dared to suggest that Western troops could be sent to support Ukraine’s struggle. “If Russia wins this war, Europe’s credibility will be reduced to zero,” he rightly said. ‘We would no longer have safety in Europe. Who can seriously believe that Putin, who doesn’t respect borders, would stop there?’
Macron’s new-found urgency is reflected in the frontline states that have suffered Russian brutality in the past and therefore have never had any illusions about the threat posed by Putin.
‘Real solidarity with Ukraine? Fewer words, more ammunition,” said an online message from Donald Tusk, the prime minister of Poland, whose country is rearming at a breathtaking pace to create the strongest land army in Europe.
French and Polish leaders were in Berlin last week trying to convince ultra-cautious German leader Olaf Scholz to send long-range, low-flying, bunker-busting Taurus missiles to Ukraine.
Germany is Europe’s largest source of military aid to Ukraine – but Scholz fears the stealth missiles could be used to attack Moscow, despite Kyiv’s denials, and is therefore shamefully refusing to supply the Ukrainians with this potentially crucial weapon.
Meanwhile, Washington’s support for the country has been suspended due to political wrangling ahead of this year’s elections.
Such myopia comes at a time when military officers at the highest levels of the British armed forces are increasingly concerned that NATO could find itself at war with Russia within the next few years.
People attend a rally in Berlin near the Russian embassy where voters lined up to cast their votes for the Russian presidential election
This is why top generals are suddenly talking about conscription, warning that preparing for such a conflict must be a “nationwide undertaking.”
In such a context, it is downright disheartening that our own government is failing to follow the more clear-sighted European nations in urgently strengthening Britain’s depleted military capabilities, pouring far more money into defense and overhauling our woeful military procurement system. snap.
We must also follow Finland’s example by teaching children from an early age how to resist the flood of fake news and challenge the conspiracy theories that can be used by dictatorships to divide our countries and weaken our democracies, especially in this impending age of artificial intelligence.
As Putin said before his first election success 24 years ago, no one should believe in miracles to save their country. The relentless march of its aggression against the West has made that point terrifyingly clear.
