Putin is betting on the fact that the West is weak. The bullying of small nations by massive ones, the trampling of justice and decency in the pursuit of nationwide aggrandizement, and reckless indifference to human life should not have any place in our world. ”
These have been my phrases to the Australian Parliament on the morning of July 17, 2014, when a Russian missile battery had shot down flight MH17, killing 38 Australians among the many 298 on board, as Russian proxies seized the Donbas. If it wasn’t but apparent in 2008, when Vladimir Putin invaded Georgia, it ought to actually have been six years later, when he annexed the Crimea, that Mr. Putin was bent on the restoration of better Russia—and to hell with the liberty and independence of the international locations that have been as soon as a part of the Soviet Union.
