cancel2 2022
Canceled
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Here is somebody that has the measure of Putin and sees him for what he really is.
When we make a terrible misjudgment about someone, it is natural to make excuses for ourselves.
We decide 'something changed' in the person we thought we knew, when, in fact, we just didn't understand them in the first place.
This, sadly, characterises much of the Western political establishment's assessment of the recent actions of Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin.
Last week, for example, the former British ambassador in Moscow, Sir Tony Brenton, wrote, in the wake of Russia's invasion of Ukraine, an article entitled, 'This isn't the Vladimir Putin that I once knew'. Whereas the correct analysis is that Brenton didn't really know Putin at all.
We decide 'something changed' in the person we thought we knew, when, in fact, we just didn't understand them in the first place. This, sadly, characterises much of the Western political establishment's assessment of the recent actions of Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin, writes Dominic Lawson
Brenton is still a go-to analyst for the British media, popping up regularly on TV items about 'what is really going on in Russia'.
But in the light of recent events, and his continued role as an 'expert' on Moscow — after all, he was our ambassador there and has held academic posts contingent on his vital insights — it is worth looking at an interview he gave to The Moscow Times in 2015.
This was a year after President Putin's special forces annexed the strategically vital Ukrainian territory of Crimea (now the staging post for his troops to enter the rest of Ukraine from the south).
But Brenton told The Moscow Times (an independent newspaper, not a Kremlin mouthpiece): 'One of the really depressing phenomena that the Ukrainian crisis has brought forward has been all these Cold War warriors coming out of their cupboards.
'The story is that the bear is on the prowl again; they want to grab eastern Ukraine, which of course they don't; they want to grab [the southern Ukrainian port city] Mariupol, which of course they never did.'
Tell that to the inhabitants of Mariupol, now being laid waste by Putin's army.
Read more: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/...-sick-nor-mad-hes-ruthless-gangster-been.html
Here is somebody that has the measure of Putin and sees him for what he really is.
When we make a terrible misjudgment about someone, it is natural to make excuses for ourselves.
We decide 'something changed' in the person we thought we knew, when, in fact, we just didn't understand them in the first place.
This, sadly, characterises much of the Western political establishment's assessment of the recent actions of Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin.
Last week, for example, the former British ambassador in Moscow, Sir Tony Brenton, wrote, in the wake of Russia's invasion of Ukraine, an article entitled, 'This isn't the Vladimir Putin that I once knew'. Whereas the correct analysis is that Brenton didn't really know Putin at all.
We decide 'something changed' in the person we thought we knew, when, in fact, we just didn't understand them in the first place. This, sadly, characterises much of the Western political establishment's assessment of the recent actions of Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin, writes Dominic Lawson
Brenton is still a go-to analyst for the British media, popping up regularly on TV items about 'what is really going on in Russia'.
But in the light of recent events, and his continued role as an 'expert' on Moscow — after all, he was our ambassador there and has held academic posts contingent on his vital insights — it is worth looking at an interview he gave to The Moscow Times in 2015.
This was a year after President Putin's special forces annexed the strategically vital Ukrainian territory of Crimea (now the staging post for his troops to enter the rest of Ukraine from the south).
But Brenton told The Moscow Times (an independent newspaper, not a Kremlin mouthpiece): 'One of the really depressing phenomena that the Ukrainian crisis has brought forward has been all these Cold War warriors coming out of their cupboards.
'The story is that the bear is on the prowl again; they want to grab eastern Ukraine, which of course they don't; they want to grab [the southern Ukrainian port city] Mariupol, which of course they never did.'
Tell that to the inhabitants of Mariupol, now being laid waste by Putin's army.
Read more: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/...-sick-nor-mad-hes-ruthless-gangster-been.html
