THE UKRAINE SITUATION

Lots of discussion about the Ukraine situation today.

For weeks now, Russia has been positioning thousands of troops on Ukraine’s borders in a sort of international power play. As one expert said on the radio today, it’s a poker game with the highest stakes imaginable.

I suppose if Wales had become an independent nation, there’d still be a lot of cultural crossover between our two countries. If Wales had then joined in with France, say, in an attempt to be more 'European', the good people of Wrexham and Hay-on-Wye might have been a bit irked, to say the least, at such developments.

If Wales then went on to say it was going to join the Anti-English League, and those countries in that league, places we’ve annoyed in the past (like France, Germany, Scotland, for example) started building joint military bases along the Pembrokeshire coast, I guess things would get more tense.

What I hope we wouldn’t do though, is send the British army to camp along Offa’s Dyke and point a thousand tanks towards an independent Cardiff.

It’s horrible how the world works. The threat of violence is in itself, a diplomatic weapon. Those with the biggest threats can hold the world to ransom - hence North Korea - and even though nobody wants a war, they’ll threaten to press that button.

“We probably need to fill up on petrol today,” I told Sammy, thoughtfully. My guess as always with these things, is that fuel is about to become a lot more expensive. I was doleful about it, but it makes sense.

“Do you think there’ll be a war?” she asked.

“I do,” I replied, catching a little sadness in my own voice, logging in to my work laptop.

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Meanwhile, I was pondering why sometimes we call it ‘The Ukraine’ instead of just Ukraine. It would be weird to say ‘The Uganda’ or ’The Uzbekistan’ wouldn’t it? Listening carefully to the news channels I notice them stick correctly to just ‘Ukraine’ although every now and then, someone slips.

Even the Prime Minister did it today in his statement to the House of Commons! It must be ingrained somehow into our language in a way that makes it hard to extricate.

But it's small things like that that make all the difference. Prior to 1990, Ukraine was part of the Soviet Union, just a region. In fact, its name means ‘borderland’ or ‘the borderland’. When it was part of something bigger, it made sense to refer to it as a region of the USSR rather than a country - rather like saying The Midlands or The Outback.

The question of whether Ukraine is a region or a country then - whether it gets a ‘the’ or not, is exactly what this whole crisis is about. One side want to bring it home and embrace it as part of Mother Russia; the other see it as a sovereign nation charting its own destiny as a fully fledged independent member of the United Nations. Working out that distinction will likely cost thousands of lives.

I guess it’s not quite fair to use Wales as an analogy. We’re more democratic than Russia here in England, and we don’t have an autocratic leader who believes that Welsh people are really English people with funny accents. I’m kind of thankful really. It’s always much better to let people decide their own destiny and governance.

I suppose I’m just sad that here in the Twenty First Century, there are so many lessons from a hundred years ago we seem unable to learn. If you’re the praying type, now would be a good time.