Betrayal is in the air

The Ukraine isn’t going to get her Polish Mig-29s, even though the transfer was agreed. But then Poland’s feet got cold, with those of US and British positively turning to ice.

The Russians are busily using their air supremacy to massacre Ukrainian civilians. They are losing some planes and helicopters to SAMs and AA fire, but the losses aren’t exorbitant.

Hence President Zelensky is begging Nato to enforce a no-fly zone over his country, which entreaties are met with thunderous applause in both Parliament and Congress.

However, once those claps of thunder die out, the governments of both countries explain that complying with Zelensky’s plea would risk an all-out war with Russia, and we can’t have that, can we now? Awfully sorry about those strafed children, old boy, but no can do.

At that point Occam’s razor came out of its sheath, cutting through the fog of obfuscation with a simple solution. If Nato doesn’t want to fly sorties over the Ukraine, perhaps the Ukraine could do so herself.

You see, Poland’s air force still uses Soviet-made Mig-29s, and it so happens that Ukrainian pilots were trained on that very kit.

So they begged for the tools to do the job, and Poland was happy to oblige. She currently has 28 Mig-29s, about 20 of which are air-worthy. These planes aren’t as state-of-the-art as Russian Migs and SUs, but, as the old adage goes, the best plane is one flown by the best pilot.

Ukrainian fliers are confident of their ability and, above all, morale. Hence, when the Poles offered to transfer all their usable Migs to the Ukraine, the Ukrainians were ecstatic.

Nor would the transfer have denuded Poland’s own defences, for the Americans offered to give the country a brand-new F-16 for each Mig the Poles flew to the Ukraine. That way Poland would upgrade her own air force at no cost, while doing the right thing.

It was understood that the Migs would take off from Polish airfields, but that’s where the Poles’ feet froze. The Russians, they feared, might get cross and retaliate against Poland.

Thence came a transparent subterfuge. Poland offered to put the Migs at America’s disposal, with the Americans then getting them over to the Ukraine from their Ramstein base in Germany.

That’s where Americans drew the line. Poland, they said, is welcome to do whatever she wants with her Migs – as long as she doesn’t drag “the entire Nato alliance” in. Pentagon spokesman John Kirby dismissed the plan: “It is simply not clear to us that there is a substantive rationale for it.”

Our Transportation Secretary Grant Shapps agreed wholeheartedly: “It is important I think that we are a defensive organisation. Which means we won’t be getting directly involved in the war.”

A substantive rationale, Mr Kirby? How about the indiscriminate massacre of Ukrainian civilians?

Remember how concerned the US was 23 years ago about the genocide of Kosovars by Milosevic’s troops? On 24 March, 1999, Nato’s air force bombed Serbian targets (including the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade) to stop the on-going atrocity.

Why not do for Ukrainian Christians what you did for Kosovar Muslims? Oh well, I quite understand. Serbia didn’t have nuclear weapons and Russia does. No good poking that particular hornet’s nest.

A defensive organisation, Mr Shapps? So let’s defend ourselves, shall we? Let’s stop pretending that Russia’s offensive plans don’t extend past the Ukraine.

If Shapps still labours under that misapprehension, I suggest he watch any Russian TV channel for five minutes, picked at random. Russian Goebbelses will explain to him in simple words even he can understand (provided there’s an interpreter handy) that the Ukraine is merely the first battlefield of Russia’s war on Nato, which is to say the West, which is to say America and Britain especially.

That means a world war is already under way, and we deceive ourselves by pretending it isn’t. The longer we keep up the pretence, the weaker will be our strategic position when Russia leaves us no option but to fight.

Betrayal is indeed in the air. And Hungarian chief Orbán has inhaled that aura with both lungs.

Yesterday he announced that Hungary would not allow anyone to transport arms for the Ukraine through Hungarian territory. And there I was, thinking Hungary was a Nato member, not Putin’s best friend.

I jest. Orbán is indeed Putin’s friend and disciple, and he is busily creating a mafioso state patterned after Putin’s Russia.

In fact, I’ve seen reports showing that Orbán’s career has been financed by the FSB from the very beginning. That sinister organisation had what the Russians call kompromat: blackmail material based on Orbán’s dealings with the Russian capo di tutti capi, Semyon Mogilevich, who lived in Hungary for years.

Be that as it may, having initially made some perfunctory statements against the war, Orbán has since been sabotaging arms supplies to the Ukraine. I’m sure Putin has promised to reward his loyalty with plenty of discounted gas.

Ukrainian heroes have put up such stubborn and brilliant resistance that Russia’s disjointed ground offensive has stalled. It’s reasonably clear that Putin has only one reliable route to victory: carpet bombing the Ukraine flat, thereby breaking her fighting spirit.

Potentially that could result in millions of civilian victims, a scale of monstrosity even Milosevic couldn’t approach. Yet Joe Biden is hiding behind a technicality when he says that the US would only defend “every inch” of every Article 5 country.

The countries he has in mind are the Baltics, the three Nato members probably next on Putin’s hit list. It so happens that they were admitted into Nato in 2002, while the Ukraine’s application was rejected in 2008.

That technicality is too flimsy to hide behind. If Putin is allowed to bomb the Ukraine into submission, possibly even resorting to nuclear weapons, the Baltics’ turn will certainly come next. The Russians would then have all the momentum, leaving Nato only two options.

Option 1 will be to fight, risking a nuclear Armageddon. Since Russia outnumbers Nato ten to one in tactical nuclear weapons, Nato would have to go strategic, and something tells me Messrs Biden, Johnson and Macron aren’t the kind of leaders who could do that.

That leaves only Option 2: abject surrender and the dismantling of the system of collective security that has so far protected the West adequately. In effect, the West would welcome Russia into Europe with both arms open and flung up in the air.

The risk of a cataclysm would be much lower now, if Nato were to hand those Migs to Ukrainian pilots and wish them Godspeed. For betraying Ukrainian civilians, leaving them to their gruesome fate, is worse than immoral. It’s not going to work.