No light burns as bright as hindsight. But this is the President who all the while presided over a string of naked violations of international law, from annexing Crimea to bombing civilians in Syria, while London became the laundromat for oligarchs’ dodgy cash.
The judo black belt who claims martial arts saved him from a life of “hooliganism” on the streets had been plotting thuggery on an international scale. For him, the fall of the Berlin Wall was a “catastrophe” for Russia, to be reversed by redrawing the former USSR borders.
Boris Johnson is “confident” Putin will fail in his conquest of Ukraine. That’s when it gets tricky. In his twisted logic, Putin believes a world without Russia is a world not worth preserving.
Pariah status, crippling economic isolation and “failure” are seen as an existential threat that’ll make him desperate. A year ago, Putin lowered the bar on the use of nuclear weapons.
Maybe his new best mate, Xi Jinping in China, will be able to persuade him that a new world order with half the planet missing isn’t a good idea.
God help us all, as we pretend war planners used to say. It’s worked so far. The tender heart of our nation bleeds for the misery of Ukraine’s people as each day brings with it fresh horrors.
The indiscriminate bombing of civilians we see on our TV screens, reports of Russian soldiers raping Ukrainian women, the ceasefires in which the Russians do not cease firing. And the children in dire need of continuous cancer treatment forced to break off to cower from bombs in basements.
Yet despite the pain and anguish, and the odds stacked against them, the people of Ukraine are an inspiration for their resilience and defiance.
It takes superhuman courage combined with boiling anger for unarmed civilians to confront trigger-happy Russian soldiers and tell them to clear off. If that was all it took to win this war then the invaders would be scuttling out of the country with their tails between their legs.
But that is the stuff of movies, not real life. And Ukrainians must brace themselves for the suffering to get worse as Vladimir Putin tightens the noose around their key cities.
There are a number of ways in which this war might be brought to an end, but they grow fewer the longer it goes on. Putin has lied about invading Ukraine and over a week later his troops are shooting, destroying and killing innocent people that didn't do anything to Russia, but exist and that is all a madman needs nothing to lie and then order unprovoked attack.