Cicero's Songs

OK, I know readers of this blog now "get it": Russia under Putin is a bad guy and a serious threat to global peace.  However it is now a race against time: Putin's greed and contempt for all laws, whether domestic or international, is sending the Russian economy straight onto the rocks. On current trends, the Putin regime is creating so much damage that Russia has a very short window of maybe less than 3 years before its sustained challenge to the international system leads to firstly economic crack up and secondly political meltdown. The latest numbers must make for sobering reading in the fetid Kremlin corridors where Putin struts, basking in the short-run popularity of a "good war". As of last week, Russia had already seen $70 billion leave the country in 2014. The forecast for capital flight from Russia this year is now an eye-popping $170 billion. Just to put that in context, the total Russian reserves before the crisis broke were about $470 billion.

A whistle-stop trip back to Scotland has somewhat placed into context the crisis that Vladimir Putin has unleashed upon Europe and the world.  As military units are hurriedly scrambled into position in NATO member states, it becomes clear that Russia is merely waiting in order to unleash further aggression on Ukraine. Whether that comes in a few days, a few weeks or even a few months, the idea of a free and democratic Ukraine is as repellent to Putin as a free and democratic Russia. The crushing of all free media, all opposition points of view and even the slightest dissent in Russia has proceeded, it is now all too clear that Putin's contempt for freedom is absolute. He is openly dismissive of all Western democratic values which, in an eerie echo of Fascism, he regards as "decadent". Like Adolf Hitler in the 1930s, he has turned his tyranny abroad as well as at home. His unprovoked aggression against Ukraine breaks all treaties and all the norms of international law.