Russia invades Ukraine: All must answer call to wage economic war on Vladimir Putin's Russia – Scotsman comment

Before he sent his army to slaughter innocent civilians in Ukraine, Vladimir Putin probably regarded the West as too weak, divided and decadent to offer any real opposition to his plans.

European Commission President Ursula Von der Leyen speaks to the European Parliament about Russia's invasion of Ukraine (Picture: Jonas Roosens/Belga Mag/AFP via Getty Images)

Howls of outrage from lily-livered liberals, a few token sanctions and then a return to business as usual, he may have expected. After all, Europe can’t do without Russian gas. Or can it?

The horror unfolding in Ukraine is shaming the free world as Ukrainian journalist Daria Kaleniuk made clear in emotionally charged questions she put to Boris Johnson at a press conference yesterday. “It’s the Ukrainian children who are there taking the heat,” she told him.

However, despite Nato’s understandable unwillingness to intervene militarily because of the risks of a nuclear war, the West is showing its determination to make Putin pay a heavy price for the tragedy unfolding to the east of the borders of Nato member states Poland, Slovakia, Hungary and Romania.

As Ukrainian refugees flooded across those borders, seeking refuge beneath the Nato umbrella that their country lacked, Ursula von der Leyen, President of the European Commission, mobilised the English language and sent it into battle in a rousing speech to the European Parliament.

“We must show the power that lies in our democracies; we must show the power of people that choose their independent paths, freely and democratically. This is our show of force,” she said.

“If Putin was seeking to divide the European Union, to weaken Nato, and to break the international community, he has achieved exactly the opposite. We are more united than ever and we will stand up in this war, that is for sure, we will overcome and we will prevail. We are united and we stay united.”

The people of Europe, she said, understood “very well that we must stand up against this cruel aggression”, even though this would come at a price, “because freedom is priceless”.

At the heart of her strategy was the need to rapidly stop buying Russian gas – thereby reducing “the Kremlin’s war chest” – by switching to other suppliers and increasing energy from renewables.

In this great endeavour, the waging of economic warfare against Putin’s regime, no one who values freedom, who values life, should have any doubt about their duty to rise to von der Leyen’s call.

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