Russia invading Ukraine proves world teetering on edge of cliff

Veteran British journalist and contrarian Peter Hitchens remarked last week that he did not think Russian President Vladimir Putin would invade Ukraine because, if he did, it would prove that he was “stark, raving mad”.

On Thursday, after Russian troops entered Ukraine from multiple directions and Russian weapons hit cities right across the country, Hitchens tweeted: “Vladimir Putin turns out to be stark staring mad.

Aggressive war is a crime. Nothing excuses it.” Many around the world who, if they did not support Putin, at least understood some of Russia’s strategic concerns and didn’t believe every word of the Western narrative, would have been similarly rocked back on their heels…and the Russian leader would have lost a lot of sympathy.

Even by his own words, he wasn’t honest yesterday morning, when he announced a “special military operation” in the east of Ukraine, in the Russia-aligned separatist states of Lugansk and Donetsk. Even as he was saying this, Russian military convoys were moving into Ukraine from Belarus in the north and attacks were occurring from Russian-annexed Crimea in the south.

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That the operations are not a limited “peacekeeping” exercise, as Putin originally characterised it, is clear in his commitment to “demilitarise” Ukraine and rid it of “fascists”.

The world now seems perched on the edge of a precipice – and the depth of the plunge downwards is dependent only on whether we see a limited European war or whether it spreads further.

In the crazy years of the Cold War, the doctrine of MAD (mutually assured destruction – the reality that the Soviets and the West had enough nuclear warheads to wipe out each other many times over) prevailed.

It was enough to keep fingers off nuclear triggers. The world has changed, but a lot of the nukes are still there. And the fingers are still on the triggers.