As the Big Ugly F*****s yet again besmirch are beautiful Cotswold skies, again, dark war clouds gather, again in Europe. As always facile and idiotic similes with the Great World War II are trotted out, using such dirty words as “Appeasement”. The US and Britain need to understand our own responsibilities in this matter.

We con ourselves that NATO is a defensive alliance, but I don’t think the Serbs would agree. A B-1 bomber launched from RAF Fairford cut the electricity of a major European city, Belgrade, during the “Kosovo War”, which I at the time and still, I dub the “NATO Justification of its existence War”. Terrorising the citizens of Belgrade and incidentally killing more Kosovars that the Serb paramilitaries, this so-called “Humanitarian War”, was anything but defensive from a Russian perspective.

What we are reaping is the fruits of the hideous triumphalism that the West indulged in in the 1990’s, rubbing the noses of Russians into the foul death of the Soviet Union. While many countries could distance themselves from the idiocy of the Cold War, Russia was left holding the dead baby, and the nuclear weapons. Ideologues imposed a crash course in fierce capitalism onto their victims and the result is what we see today, an oligarchic, quasi- authoritarian state.

We need to support the many peaceful Russian initiatives and civil society in general in Russia, and Ukraine for that matter. After all, why did the grossly corrupt President Trump believe he could parlay weapons for political favours from the Ukrainian government in 2016? There is absolutely nothing a B-52 in the Cotswolds can do the help the situation in Eastern Europe.

James Derieg

Kemble