All-out war between Russia and Ukraine appears imminent, and British brass hats can’t wait to join in.
Armed Forces minister James Heappey talks blithely of the “grave possibility” of war with “tens of thousands dying.”
Britain this week deployed an undisclosed number of Army personnel to the front line, a no man's land of freezing First World War-style trenches.
They’re equipped with latest anti-tank weapons for use against the Red Army. They’re there to train Ukrainian soldiers, says the MoD, not to fight.
But this is how wars begin. It’s called mission creep. The Americans were only in Vietnam to train local forces, until they weren’t. And look what happened.
If British soldiers come under direct fire, they must defend themselves. Then what? RAF sorties to take out attacking Russian forces? More, and bigger, military involvement? Tory MPs led by ex-officer Tobias Ellwood have formed a Charge of the Fight Brigade, egging on the military. How long before Boris Johnson begins to parade as the true successor to liberator Thatcher?
But Donetsk isn’t British. This isn’t the Falklands.
I’m no pacifist – if we’re invaded, stick a rifle in my hands – and I hold no brief for dictator Vladimir Putin.
His ambition to rebuild a Russian empire of influence from the ruins of the USSR is clear. But this is not our fight. They are not at the gates of Greenwich, and Nato is a reliable bulwark against any such danger.
The Germans, who have much more to lose from a conflict close to their borders, promise “everything short of war”: punitive sanctions to hit the Russian economy hard.
We should do the same. The coal mines of the Donbas are not worth the life of a single British soldier.
