Ukraine war: Putin has redrawn the world - but not the way he wanted

[Uncle Joe]

By Allan Little
BBC News

(snip)

But above all, this is a war that pits the world's democracies against the world's authoritarian regimes.

It is also a war between two conflicting conceptions of the rules by which international relations should function.

The Oxford scholar Timothy Garton Ash says these two world views can be expressed in short form by two words - Helsinki versus Yalta.

At Yalta in 1945, Stalin, Roosevelt and Churchill carved post-war Europe into "spheres of influence" - most of Eastern Europe to Russia, the West to the trans-Atlantic alliance that would set about rebuilding Europe's democracies.

(snip)

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-60767454

Long, in-depth and profound analysis.

[dalton99a]

1. Don't forget his destructive interference in Western political systems e.g. 2016 U.S. election

The evidence has been building for years.

Two decades have passed since he sent troops into Georgia claiming he was supporting breakaway regions.

Later, he sent spies into British cities armed with nerve agents to murder exiled Russians.

In 2014, he invaded Eastern Ukraine and annexed Crimea.

Despite all this, Germany, and much of the EU, were locking themselves into an unhealthy dependence on Russian gas. A year after the annexation of Crimea, they approved the building of a new pipeline, Nord Stream 2, to boost supplies.

The "complacency" Liz Truss refers to also indicts her own country. London has been a safe haven for Russian money since John Major was prime minister. Russian oligarchs have parked billions here, laundered their money, bought up the most prestigious private homes in the capital, socialised with politicians and donated to their campaign funds. Few questions were asked about where their vast wealth, acquired so suddenly, had come from.

So, no. The Western democracies have not been "paying attention" to the nature of the menace that has been incubating on their eastern frontier.