You know how sometimes
it only takes one thing to ruin your day? Well, I got home and reached for the tomato sauce only to find it empty. I got a few frantic squirts out of it. Just enough for half of my piece of fish. There was my hotdog looking all naked and embarrassed.
Disappointed and angry, I went to the pub and met my best mate, Gobbo, and told him the terrible story. We agreed that fish and chips without sauce should be a crime.
“Wattie’s sauce,” he said.
“Obviously,” I replied.
To lighten the mood, I added: “Oh, and get this, I’ve been sanctioned by the Russian Government”.
I showed him the website of the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs listing 36 New Zealanders who had been sanctioned. We had a good old laugh and decided to retaliate.
With a quorum of residents assembled at the 4 Shore tavern, we resolved the following: “Mr Putin, having banned one of ours from entering the territory of the Russian Federation, we hereby ban you from entering the mighty Christchurch suburb of Sumner. You are not welcome in this community from the Ferrymead side of the causeway to the peak of Summit Road.”
In all seriousness, though, Vladimir Putin will never get anywhere near Sumner. If he lands in New Zealand, or any one of 123 countries, he will immediately be arrested as the International Criminal Court issued a warrant for him last year. That’s what you get for stealing Ukrainian children.
He is now only welcomed by the likes of China and North Korea, ostensibly turning Russia into a pariah state.
Before his invasion of Ukraine, Putin had Europe at his feet. In supplying Europe’s gas and oil, Russia was on a remarkable path of prosperity. Almost overnight, those taps were turned off and the country, like Putin himself, is isolated and alone.
But the world hasn’t only become smaller for Putin, his imagined enemies in Nato are now more numerous and nearer. Since his war in Ukraine, both Finland and Sweden have joined the military alliance, the former having a more than 1300km border with Russia.
Putin was seen by many as a master chess player on the world stage. In chess, one move can prove catastrophic. The invasion of Ukraine was one such move. Putin still has pieces on the board, but the game is essentially over.
The only people who don’t know it are the Russians who, deprived of a free media or free speech, are sucked into Putin’s delusions. The swathes of economic sanctions levelled by the West have not immediately crippled the Russian economy, but they are grinding away at it. In the end, the Russian people will be the ones who ultimately feel their effects.
But it is the Ukrainians who have suffered the most. The absolute destruction of large cities like Mariupol and Bakhmut and the countless smaller towns and villages are crimes being played out in real time, with hundreds of thousands of casualties.
Putin’s plan was to take the whole country in a matter of days, but a furious and determined resistance by the Ukrainians has blunted the Russian military to such a degree that any further territorial ambitions Putin was entertaining must now be seen as fanciful, even by him.
His desire to expand the Russian state meant he compared himself to Peter the Great. Peter the Great won wars and both westernised and modernised Russia. History will remember Putin in precisely opposite ways.
Europe, and the West more generally, owe Ukraine a tremendous debt for their sacrifices. And we must repay that with the arms and training Ukraine requires to prevail.
In a repressive and brutal state like Russia, a columnist like me may fear for his life. Not in New Zealand. And that’s what makes the West, with all its faults, great.
I was presumably targeted due to a previous column I had written, so here I am writing another one. I trust that demonstrates just how little I care about my sanction. Apart from creating a giggle at the pub, it means absolutely nothing.
I am infinitely more concerned with buying tomato sauce.
