Shame About Russia.

I was brought up during the Cold War when all arms of the western Establishment steered us to the view that Russia was a dark and brutish place, and that Russians were mostly a dark and brutish people. And then Mikhail Gorbochev set about reforming the situation. The USSR released its captive states, the Berlin Wall came down, and gradually we got used to the idea that Russians were normal people like the rest of us and we could start regarding them as friends.

But then Mr Putin came along. Dissidents were imprisoned, abused, kidnapped from international flights, and even chased across the world to be dispatched with poisonous chemicals. Russia was barred from flying its flag at the Olympics because of the doping scandals, and now we have Ukraine filling the news and fuelling fear of the unthinkable: another European war.

Suddenly, Russia is our enemy again and we have to dig deep to maintain the notion that Russians can be our friends. And that’s a shame because it isn’t the Russian people who are generating the hostility, is it? Whatever spurious arguments Mr Putin might offer to justify Russia’s aggression, it’s basically about feeding his ego. A whole nation tarred with the stigma of one man’s egomania. Should I care? For some reason, it seems I do.