Putin's vendetta: Former UK Defence Minister warns of looming retaliation
– Vladimir Putin irrationally blames the United Kingdom for a series of historical and current failures of Russia, including the ongoing Ukrainian operation in the Kursk region. He will want to take revenge for it one day, warned former British Defence Minister Ben Wallace on Thursday.
Putin's essay and his interpretation of history
In an article published in the "Daily Telegraph", Wallace, who headed the defence department from 2019-2023, reveals that even before the Russian invasion of Ukraine began in February 2022, he was convincing security advisors that Putin is not driven by logic or a desire to modernize Russia, but by revenge and maintaining his own legacy.
"A bizarre essay that Putin personally wrote in June 2021, titled 'The Real Lessons of the 75th Anniversary of World War II,' desperately twists facts, ignores events and portrays Russia as the saviour of the world. He claims that the Nazi-Soviet pact, which led to the invasion and dismemberment of Poland, was beneficial for the United Kingdom," Wallace wrote.
"By trying to reshape Russia's role in World War II, Putin blames the United Kingdom and France and completely distorts the Ribbentrop-Molotov pact. He doesn't mention the massacre of 22,000 Poles in Katyn carried out by the Red Army and the secret police in 1940. Nor does he mention that before the invasion of Poland, Russia trained with the Wehrmacht and sold them tanks. His essay is worth reading only to understand this man,” he continued.
Underappreciated analyses of experts
Wallace expressed regret that Russia experts, whether in the British Foreign Office, the French government, or the American CIA, did not appreciate this essay, just like another one titled "On the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians.” In analysing Putin's actions, they were too guided by rational considerations, overlooking the human factor.
Meeting with Russian leaders
Wallace recalls a meeting with his Russian counterpart, Sergei Shoigu, and the Chief of the General Staff of the Russian Armed Forces, General Valery Gerasimov, 10 days before the invasion. During the meeting, they stopped maintaining any pretences, and Gerasimov told him that Russia would never allow itself to be humiliated again.
A new version of Russia's history
"These people at the top of Russia believe they are rewriting history, rectifying the humiliation they felt at the end of the Cold War and settling scores from hundreds of years. While Russia is doing a very good job of once again humiliating itself with its own actions, we should realize that in Putin's version of history, it is the United Kingdom, not the United States, that is at the heart of Russia’s failures," Wallace wrote.
Distorted worldview
"In Putin's distorted view of the world, we were behind the Crimean War and the defeats of the tsars, we were behind the rise of Hitler, and we were behind the counter-revolution. Our spies were behind the end of the Soviet Union. The United Kingdom is in Putin's crosshairs. One of the highest-ranking members of the Russian siloviki recently said, 'We know that the United Kingdom is behind the invasion of Kursk.' We weren't. Make no mistake, Putin is coming after us. We must be prepared for the inevitable,” the former Defence Minister warned.
