Voices: The ‘humanitarian corridors’ set up by Russia are Putin’s sickest joke

The west – the world in fact – has a choice: either it can watch and do nothing while civilians (children included, and whole families) are shot and shelled as they try to escape the bombing of their homes... or what, exactly?

When you’re faced with an enemy as cruel, cowardly, incompetent and murderous as Vladimir Putin and his military, it is difficult to identify what exactly would stop the slaughter right now. We should be waging economic war, and making it more intense and akin to blockade, but it takes time to be effective.

Our limited military assistance is crucial – but is also precisely that: limited. The public can see that internationally-policed secure humanitarian corridors would certainly save lives, almost immediately; but the west lacks the nerve to enforce them. The same is true of the no-fly zones that would end the war almost rapidly, but there is even less appetite for those.

There are sound arguments against making such bold demands – they risk proving the Russian point that Ukraine is a western Nazi puppet; we’d risk escalation to World War III; and American, French, German, Polish and British forces could suffer casualties. Public opinion would not like that; and yet public opinion is surely increasingly moved by what it sees, and by the obduracy and cruelty of the Russians. As in former Yugoslavia and Iraq, the pressure on the politicians will become unbearable. “Something must be done” is a powerful call.

In truth, we must know that sooner or later we will have to confront the Russians. In the short run it would surprise and confuse the Kremlin. We are edging towards it even now.

The Poles and others offer planes to the Ukrainians, but the Russians insist this is an act of war. The west puts sanctions on Russia and cronies of Putin, and this to Moscow is an act of war. The nuclear alert levels are raised by Moscow. When he moves into Moldova, will we do nothing more than impose more sanctions because it’s not in Nato?

When he moves on Estonia will we abandon it because although it is in Nato, we can’t risk nuclear war with Russia? Where does our fear of Russia leave us? At Putin’s mercy. In due course, he will tell us that he will use nuclear weapons until we stop “threatening” Russia by having British and French troops in Estonia, and the Americans are requested to take their missiles out of Romania. What do we do then?

“Our hearts go out”, as the cliche goes, but not our soldiers or jet fighters, it would seem. We want humanitarian corridors, and the Russians kindly set them up – so they can use old folk and kids as target practice. Their sickest joke is Putin’s offer of rescue corridors to Russia and its ally Belarus. Imagine having your children and grandchildren murdered by the Russians, and then they offer to take you to safety?

When they are confronted by Ukrainian troops – and even civilians – face to face, the Russians are surprised by their resistance and bravery. So, they defer to methods of the medieval siege, bombarding and cutting off populations from running water, electricity, food, medicines and fuel and starving them into submission.

If that doesn’t work, then the cities of Ukraine will be razed to the ground, as were Aleppo and Grozny before them. It is not impossible that the Russians would use chemical weapons or even “battlefield” nuclear weapons, even if they killed Russians as well as Ukrainians. As well as lives, Ukrainian art, cultural treasures, architecture and a way of life will be reduced to dust. Only the bitterest of enmities will emerge from that dust.

We can see for ourselves the truth about Putin’s war machine. Thanks to smartphones, dash cams, CCTV and the efforts of brave journalists such as Stuart Ramsay and his Sky News crew, recently themselves caught up in a deadly ambush, we can see how Russia proposes to “liberate” Ukrainians from militarism and naziism.

To keep up to speed with all the latest opinions and comment sign up to our free weekly Voices Dispatches newsletter by clicking here

The Russians claim not be firing at civilians, and that they only cause casualties as collateral damage; the reality is nearer that they only shoot at defenceless civilian targets because their attacks on the Ukrainian military have been so ineffective. The only weapon of war they know how to use is mass terror.

If we put up some resistance to Putin, “escalation” you can call it, and send our own ultimata about the killing of civilians; then we will test his nerve as it has never been tested. If he wants to make war a legitimate way of settling international disputes, then see how he likes it.

Nato is stronger than Putin and his military know it. We need to show the kind of resolution Jack Kennedy did in the Cuban missile crisis, or a Ronald Reagan in the final stages of the Cold War. Or we can carry on sending our hearts out to the dead.