These are some comments which the UK’s former Defence Minister Ben Wallace has been making at a gathering of European leaders in Warsaw:
I think what we have to remember is what motivates Putin. Putin is in love with the idea of dominating Ukraine, taking Ukraine, ‘Crimea is Russia’ … If you read his speeches of 2014 he compares Crimea to the Holy Mount.
So we have to help Ukraine have the long range capabilities to make Crimea unviable. We need to choke the life out of Crimea. And I think if Putin will realise he’s got something to lose, it is not inhabitable or not possible for it to function, and that bridge, we need Tauruses in from Germany, we need to smash the Kerch Bridge, because that’s a statue to Putin’s ego, and I think if we do that Putin will suddenly realise he’s got something to lose.”
I remember one senior member of an intelligence service in Europe saying to me that Putin wouldn’t invade because it wouldn’t be logical. Well, no, it’s not logical by any benchmark. What Putin has done is illogical, disastrous within country, and has killed millions of people. But these people aren’t always logical.
They’re not us. They don’t have democracies in the same way, they don’t have checks and balances that we have. And we have lost that skill, that deep skill that we might have had for the last, you know, hundreds of years ago or 50 years ago, to recognise and read your adversary. Read the room [1]
I think the bold has been added by the Guardian, (a nice example of the blurred lines between “reporting” and political statements).
This, by any measure, is extremely crude. “smash”, “they’re not us”, make Crimea “unliveable”. By “unliveable” does he mean like Israel is making Gaza unliveable? At what level are Russians “not us”? Are they ontologically different from us? Sort of like animals are different from humans, by any chance?
As far as the comments about Crimea go, I don’t need to rehash the empirical evidence about Crimea. It is all readily accessible in the public domain, in mainstream Western and Ukrainian sources. Briefly, there is a majority ethnic Russian population in Crimea. The 80% result of the referendum has been confirmed by several mainstream Western polls. How does Wallace, or anyone else, propose that Kiev could rule Crimea?
Talking of ruling a territory with a population who does not want to be ruled by you. Central and Western Ukraine would not want to be ruled by Russia. This is why Putin did not ever and does not now plan to “take” these areas. What evidence is there anywhere that he did? None at all; not in speeches, not in deeds. Wallace likes to quote Putin’s well-known essay, published before the current war, about the history of Ukraine as evidence to support his views; but, in that text, Putin makes it 100% clear that he envisages a separate and sovereign Ukraine, which will be in partnership with Russia. [2] The initial supposed “invasion” force was far too small to have been intended as an attempt to “take” all of Ukraine. Another point, easy to forget, given the never ending false narrative these people produce; the fact is there are several million people in Ukraine, probably a majority in the Donbas, who would prefer to be closer to, even part of, Russia, than the EU. That is just how it is. What about these people? If they were Welsh people demanding language rights and the right to educate their children in Welsh, would Wallace airbrush them out of history?
Concerning the argument about “illogicality”. First of all; both Wallace and the intelligence official he was speaking too, are confusing logic and rationality, (unless Wallace is misquoting the intelligence official, which is quite possible). Logic concerns statements, such as the following. All cats love mice. Barsic is a cat. Therefore, Barsic loves mice. The conclusion is true or false, as a matter of logic. But, when states decide on military actions their policy is either rational or irrational. A rational foreign policy is one which combines sound reason, a plausible theory, and is based on empirical facts. (In his book, How States Think, Professor John Mearsheimer discusses what rationality in foreign policy means, and how states in general act rationally, in their foreign policy). Wallace and his intelligence contact are talking about rationality, not logic; but, we do not expect European leaders to be intellectual enough not to make basic errors like this, any more. At any event, let’s consider Wallace’s argument. “It would have been irrational of Putin to invade Ukraine. He did. Therefore he is not rational”. The error is easy to point out. The intelligence official was 100% correct in his analysis; it would have been irrational for Putin to “invade” Ukraine. This is why Putin has not “invaded” Ukraine. Wallace is forgetting that the line that “Russia has invaded Ukraine” is a Western political narrative. As Mearsheimer points out, the size of the initial force was far too small to have “taken” all of Ukraine. [3] Nor; is there any evidence in statements made by Kremlin officials and the Russian leadership prior to February 2022 which can be used to point to a policy of “conquering Ukraine”. On the other hand; there is a large amount of material in which the leadership talked about a) the red-line posed by Ukraine being in NATO and b) the rights of the people of Donbas. To posit a plan to invade and take Ukraine one has suppose a concerted multi-year, planned hoax which dozens of members of Russia’s political elite were involved in, in which they talked about these points, while secretly thinking of restoring the Empire of Catherine the Great. That is irrational!
Russia has not “invaded” Ukraine. They carried out a special operation which may have been intended to change the regime in Kiev, or at least force them to change course, * and an operation to “liberate” or annex, part of the East, where a “pro-Russian” population lives. The first part of that apparently failed, not least due to Western agitation and intervention telling Kiev they would support them, and they are now involved in a grinding war. But, still, their demands are completely clear and frequently stated; control of the 4 Eastern provinces, (with some flexibility on Kherson and Zaporizhia), no NATO, and a limited military for Ukraine. Ukraine can still join the EU. This is not an invasion, or an attempt to “take” Ukraine, or dominate Ukraine. It is a rational policy, completely in line with how Great Power states generally act, when faced with a build-up of a hostile foreign power in a client-state on their borders. This is true from the Roman Empire and Persia fighting over Armenia and Syria to the US rejecting Soviet forces in Cuba.
It seems to me that convincing yourself that your enemy is “not like us” and is “irrational” and has false Gods, (“Putin and the Holy Mount”), is, sadly, a normal part of demonising your enemy in war; a kind of war fever. This “fever” is very, very strong in Europe at the moment. While there is a strong patriotic discourse in Russia now; I don’t see this kind of demonisation of the West. There are more likely to lament how far modern Western leaders are from the cultural and intellectual figures of European history. [4]
The horrible irony of Wallace’s reported comments is his belief that he is the one “reading the room”. Oh, god. The sheer lack of intellectual ability of these people is staggering.
* That seems to this author the most likely explanation for the column headed towards Kiev, though I have heard serious commentators suggest that it was a military ploy to draw forces away from the East.
Notes
- https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2025/sep/30/europe-russia-drones-ukraine-rutte-von-der-leyen-poland-kellogg-latest-updates?filterKeyEvents=false&page=with%3Ablock-68dbcb798f081bad1b9ef413#block-68dbcb798f081bad1b9ef413
- http://en.kremlin.ru/events/president/news/66181
- https://mearsheimer.substack.com/p/who-caused-the-ukraine-war
- https://russiaun.ru/en/news/unsc_220925