Some days before Christmas Russian President Vladimir Putin gave a four hour-long press conference. At that conference he said:
“What is happening now – this tension that is building in Europe – is their fault. At every step, Russia was forced to somehow respond, at every step the situation kept getting worse and worse . . . And so today we’re in this situation, when we’re forced to resolve something.
“They simply do what they want.
“But what they are doing on the territory of Ukraine now – or trying to do and going to do – is not thousands of kilometres away from our national border.
“This is at the doorstep of our home. They must understand that we simply have nowhere further to retreat.”
Was it not agreed after the fall of the Berlin Wall that Nato would not ‘head’ east’?
Pope Francis in his Christmas address pleaded with world leaders to talk with one another. There is urgent need for dialogue right now.
Mr Putin’s comment about 'having nowhere further to retrea't is an interesting comment to make in December.
Every Russian is aware of December 1942 as the battle at Stalingrad was turning in the favour of the Soviet Union and an order had gone out that no Russian was to cross the Volga.
Order 227, ‘Not a step back’ was issued by Stalin in July 1942.
It is an order etched in the mind of every Russian, who is aware of the success that followed in the war that Russians call the Great patriotic War.
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