A message from my adopted home, Ukraine: Scotland must prepare for war

Nothing prepares you for war. For me, it began with waking up at my usual 7am and turning on my phone. The intensity of what followed is hard to describe. It was like my phone had become possessed, spewing a litany of notifications, vibrations, and missed calls.

That is how the morning of 24 February, 2022, began for me. More than three years later, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, my adopted home, rages on.

It is a reality that I fear will come to Scotland in the near future too. Recent events, historical precedent and political reality point to another world war beginning in less than a decade.

The view from Andrew Sweeney's flat after a deadly Russian missile strike hit Kyiv earlier this week | Andrew Sweeney

Pathetic increase in defence spending

Yet awareness of this looming nightmare is non-existent back home. Our politics trundles on with the usual, cheap point-scoring and parochial nonsense we have come to expect of Holyrood and Westminster. Military spending, set to increase by a pathetic increment of 0.2 per cent, is not sufficient for the challenges to come.

The West had its chance to avoid this, but its support for Ukraine came too little, too late. The consequences for Russia of its aggression have not been nearly severe enough, and now, with the United States apparently determined to reward Moscow’s aggression with Ukrainian territory, the Russians know that military expansionism can work.

So they will regroup, recruit and rearm, and come for the Baltic States and Poland next, as they have always said they would. These Nato countries will cite Article 5 of the alliance’s treaty, and we will come to their defence. We will be at war.

I know there will be some reading this who think I am an alarmist. Up until February 24, I didn’t believe Russia would invade Ukraine either, even though the signs were obvious in hindsight.

You might be thinking, “So what? It’s so far away.” Yet a war with Russia, even if it is primarily fought in Central and Eastern Europe, will affect Scotland in ways many can’t imagine.

Russian media awash with anti-UK vitriol

If you want to get an idea, start by watching Russian media. It is jarring stuff, with the United Kingdom receiving much of the worst vitriol.

It is not unusual for nationalistic pundits to muse over which UK cities would be the first to get nuked by Russia in a full-blown war. They don’t do this because they want to force Russians to support war. They’re pandering to what their audience wants to hear.

Nuclear attacks cannot, of course, be ruled out in a war between nuclear powers, but their use is unlikely, despite the vitriolic fantasies of Russia’s propagandists. Neither the Axis powers nor the Allies used chemical weapons in the Second World War, despite their previous widespread use.

The conventional military threats we’ll face are bad enough. The frequent flights of Russian military planes near our airspace make their power projection clear, and Lossiemouth and Leuchars would be major targets. Faslane, home to the UK’s nuclear deterrent, is definitely within the Russians’ crosshairs. The Russians will not hesitate to attack our cities either.

A potentially fatal decision

The disruption caused by the mere possibility of air attacks cannot be underestimated. In Ukraine, if a single MiG 31 jet takes off in Russia, it will trigger a countrywide alert at any time, day or night.

Imagine air raid sirens going off, every day, for years. Every time the alarm sounds, you will frantically check your phone to find out what kind of threat has been reported. And if it is at night, you will try to decide whether to head to a shelter or risk going back to sleep.

When attacks do happen, the terror is unimaginable. On Wednesday night, 12 people were killed in Kyiv; I saw a building burn to ash from my apartment.

The other threats to Scotland are more subtle. Expect our internet and social media to be disrupted, with extremist voices suddenly surging in popularity, just as we saw in Romania. The social media presence of a fringe presidential candidate exploded after receiving Russian funding, with the election cancelled as a result. Far left, far right, it makes no difference. Russia will support anything, regardless of ideology, as long as it suits their interests.

Trump’s reward for Russian aggression

Still sounds implausible? The US wants to reward Russian aggression in Ukraine by recognising the annexation of Crimea. This is worse than Munich in 1938, when we abandoned Czechoslovakia to the Nazis.

If history repeats itself, then Ukraine represents the Spanish Civil War, not for its politics but as a warning of future global conflict, and how it will be fought. From Guernica in 1937 to Bucha in 2022 and beyond.

Unionist or nationalist, left or right, the coming storm will affect us all. Donald Trump’s second presidency has already upended everything we took for granted about our geo-political security. He has only been in office for three months – imagine what is coming next?

Start to put plans in place; consider how you might respond to interruptions to the power supply or the internet, for example. A global conflict would likely disrupt food supplies, so consider stocking up, and do not forget medicines.

We are not immune to history. When an established power declines and fascism rears its head, war will always start, and Russia has nothing to fear from a weak West.

“If you tolerate this, then your children will be next,” they said about the Spanish Civil War. They were right then, and prescient about now.

Andrew Sweeney is a writer and journalist based in Kyiv, specialising in business and medical reporting