Nearly a year after Russia’s special operation, the western narrative of an ‘unprovoked’ attack has become impossible to sustain
Last February, it sounded at least superficially plausible to characterise Russian President Vladimir Putin’s decision to send troops and tanks into his neighbour as nothing less than an “unprovoked act of aggression”.
Putin was either a madman or a megalomaniac, trying to revive the imperial, expansionist agenda of the Soviet Union. Were his invasion to go unchallenged, he would pose a threat to the rest of Europe.
Plucky, democratic Ukraine needed the West’s unreserved support – and a near-limitless supply of weapons – to hold the line against a rogue dictator.
But that narrative looks increasingly threadbare, at least if one reads beyond the establishment media – a media that has never sounded quite so monotone, so determined to beat the drum of war, so amnesiac and so irresponsible.
