If you’re a small, weedy, pimply, probably bespectacled, nerdy, sand-kicked-in-yer-face, mummy’s-boy type and outside your front door you can see the school bully and his six best mates from the rugby team and boxing squad, all doing their marshal arts training in their beefy, muscly, deep-voiced way, would that be cause for concern? Would it worry you in any way?

Well we should ask Ukraine as they seem to be in precisely that situation. The only difference is that the above described nerd does not occupy a politically and militaristically important region of immense sensitivity. Nor has he just agreed to join a new gang in the big boys’ school up the road.

Putin has amassed a hundred thousand troops on the Ukraine border. Who spend their days (and nights) performing ‘military exercises’ which are in no way intended to intimidate, frighten or threaten their neighbours. Even though there has been hostility between the 2 nations ever since Ukraine was reborn in 1991, freed from Russian domination. Ukraine wants to be part of Europe and Russia is paranoid about having ‘Europe’ so close to its borders. Further intentional involvement by Ukraine with NATO would make Putin very nervous and unhappy. But there is an empty space in the EU currently, recently vacated, which Ukraine would love to occupy. Putin, meanwhile, is under some kind of impression that Ukraine is merely on a short term lease from him, who remains the ‘ultimate landlord’ of what the natives consider a free and independent nation state.

Britain has sent troops over. American has sent troops. Yesterday France sent 300 soldiers there, possibly in case the situation requires any kind of surrender or retreat, and arms are building up.

Not to over-react or anything but THIS IS SERIOUS SHIT. We’re entering Bay of Pigs territory but much closer to home. America and Russia love a proxy war. They really enjoyed Korea, loved Vietnam and had decades of realigning allegiances and arming up opposing forces in the Middle East. So whilst Joe Biden sounds like Trump with his threats, who in turn sounded like a very poor John Wayne impersonator, Putin is unyielding, unbending, brutal, dogmatic and not really very nice at all. The Russian language has no word for ‘negotiate’, but seventeen for ‘attack!’

So next time we’re agonising about the price of gas, lateral flow tests or whether Boris is just a tosser or in fact the greatest tosser ever to occupy Number 10, just remember that there’s some big stuff going on in the world. And I don’t just mean football.

Happy Saturday

A xxxx