I have not written much about the Russian invasion of Ukraine because the truth is I know very little about. As with Covid, I am afraid most of the commentary is about reinforcing existing narratives (and blame games) rather than an objective reasoning of what has gone so wrong that one state neighbouring the EU can simply invade another.
What I post here are just some thoughts.
Transnistria
Firstly, we are too inclined to view things in the immediacy – a natural human bias reinforced by the social media age.
As long ago as 2004 I visited the Russian puppet state of Transnistria, carved off by means of military insurgency from a democratic sovereign state neighbouring (albeit not initially, but by that stage) the EU.
Entry into what is in fact part of the sovereign territory of the Republic of Moldova from the rest of the sovereign territory of the Republic of Moldova involved a cursory check by “Transnistrian border” guards followed by entry on to our bus by Russian troops.
There they were, on our bus – Russian troops literally in the middle of the sovereign territory of a state which does not even share a border with Russia.
The West’s response? Well, most readers will never have heard of Transnistria…
Middle East
Secondly, we vastly overstate “the West’s” ability to do anything.
After all, we have seen cursory attempts to intervene in Syria against a despotic tyrant and a response to the inevitable refugee crisis which is anything but comprehensive, leaving countless families either to their fate in a war zone or to drown in the sea.
Meanwhile, the West simply upped and left Afghanistan with the mission incomplete, thus leaving the country ravaged by terrorists, without even securing the departure of all those there who had worked for the West at great risk.
How does that make the West look in Moscow? Russia of course then got involved in Syria – something few in the West even consider.
Lies and damned lies
Thirdly, we have this idea that the West is more advanced when it comes to concepts of truth and democracy.
Vladimir Putin’s “justification” of his invasion of Ukraine is of course historically outrageous, based on a foundation of fantasy. It has been nearly universally condemned.
Yet of course there was another country, only a year ago, where a coup was attempted against the newly elected leader by the sitting President at a cost of five lives; yet the sitting President is somehow still a free man in a land where people of a certain background frequently get jailed for stealing hand cream.
And there is of course another country where the choice at the last election was between a man who needs the police to tell him whether he was somewhere and advisers to tell him whether what he is doing is breaking his own laws and a man who believes that Russia invading Ukraine is somehow NATO’s fault. They operate in a Parliament where legislators get thrown out for accurate accusations that someone is lying, but not actually for openly lying.
At least we in the West have a “free press”… where discussion is openly about the one western country “sinking” ships from another allied country which shares its values, or overtly going to war over fishing rights with a close military partner with which it has a direct frontier specifically constructed so they could share a single economic zone.
Oh, and of course where mouthy politicians and community leaders get coverage just for being mouthy, with lies every bit as brazen as Putin’s going magnified rather than challenged…
Religion
Fourthly, we forget the pull of culture and its religious underpinnings in any society, and the ability of despots to abuse it.
The aforementioned trip to the Republic of Moldova also involved several visits to restored Orthodox churches. There has been a fissure only in the last three or four years within that Church, as the Ukrainian Church broke off from the Russian Church and then the latter became independent of Byzantine authority (not totally unlike Henry VIII’s break with Rome).
Who in the West was even remotely aware of this? I certainly would not have been, but for the memory.
Morality
Finally, the truth is that we in the West have become selfish. Just look at social media – it is all about me, me, me. Much of it is about callous self-enrichment or showing off decadence, but even the “good” social media is about mindfulness, self-love and so on – but rarely if ever of love for community, commitment to society or contribution to our shared environs.
Hence if it wins (and that is by no means certain, to be clear) Russia will get away with it, and it knows it. It will settle in for an occupation of Eastern and Southern Ukraine and Kiev itself, the West will promise “tough sanctions”, but then the suffering in the West itself will begin as gas prices rise and the “self” will emerge again – who cares about people in bomb shelters in a city we have never heard of when we can’t now afford to go to Dubai (we’re not too keen on looking at how it is ruled either, by the way)?
The people who will determine 95% of what happens next will be Russians and Ukrainians. We in the West will choose self (be it self-love or self-hate) over meaningful solidarity, and inevitably thus so will our politicians. Sadly, what is happening in the East tells us a lot about us in the West.
Ian James Parsley 
All this is true. But permit me to add to the catalogue of absurdity. The government of the Republic of Ireland has been, and will continue to signal its abhorence of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Its leaders will posture accordingly.
But the Republic will not join the NATO alliance in order to help defend European democracy. Nor will it fund credible defence forces of its own. The army is an absurdity, with numbers well below its own inadequate standards of what is appropriate to defend the country; there is no airforce and no radar, as a consequence of which the Republic’s air space is defended by the air force of a nearby country which is regularly insulted by elected members of the national parliament; there are eight vessels in the Irish naval service, two of which are presently inoperative. When recently, a Russian warship appeared near the Irish coast, the strongest reaction came from a group of fishing boats from the south coast. The national anthem is The soldiers’ Song.
It would be interesting to know what Vladimir Putin makes of this.
Indeed, four Irish MEPs even voted against a motion in the European Parliament condemning Russian aggression just in December. Thank goodness for the Fishermen!
The folly does not stop with the Irish.
A short time ago Gavin Williamson (then in the Cabinet) publicly demanded that Putin should “shut up and go away.” On Wednesday, at a meeting between Ben Wallace, Priti Patel and some, presumably senior, British Army officer, the recording continued afer the photo-opportunity. Wallace described Putin as completely “tonto”, and the officer welcomed a war, saying that it would provide an opportunity to “kick ass, as they had in 1853”. Another charge for the Light Brigade.
Meanwhile, over at Fox News, Tucker Carlson says that they are “rooting neither for Putin nor Ukraine, only for peace”. Trump’s former military advisor, now a Fox expert, insists that US troops should be to be sent to the border with Mexico rather than to Eastern Europe.
With friends like these, one can only pity the people in Ukraine.