Remember it was Putin who invaded Ukraine, not the other way around

An independent nation has every right to defend itself and in this respect Ukraine has acted with considerable restraint. Even being on the receiving end of large-scale missile strikes, it has not reciprocated.

Putin has not offered to stop the war without capitulation of the sovereign Ukrainian nation. Now that they have started to turn the tide, Putin – who Mr Lee seems to admire – threatens everyone else around the world with nuclear war! Which, it should be noted, means everyone loses.

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In this Putin is doing what every other dictator has done, and that is taking his country and people down his suicide path. Nato did not create the war and in itself is not taking part. Individual independent members of Nato are standing behind Ukraine in support of their freedom fight against an aggressor nation.

Nato does not invade other countries and take control of them. Nato is a voluntary treaty organisation for collective defence, and came about solely because of Soviet (20th-century Imperial Russia) aggression towards the peoples and nations it liberated from Nazi Germany. Those same nations, recognising the malign influence of Russia, applied to be part of the collective defence treaty after the Cold War ended and Russia’s empire collapsed.

Nato at no time has ever threatened Russia with invasion and Putin’s ire is directed at those who do not want to be part of his imperialistic ambitions. If Mr Lee wants to understand why Russia is now an enemy he should research the history, the whole history and not merely selective parts of it. He should also remember that since the Cold War we invited Russia to normalise relations, including inviting them to be a Nato partner.

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Unlike Nato, which reduced its military footprint and expenditure, Russia rearmed and expanded its influences including invading peripheral territories, assisting the despotic regime in Syria, annexing Crimea, and sending death squads into other countries with deadly chemical weapons. Putin started the war in Ukraine as part of his legacy of re-creating the Soviet Empire fuelled by his paranoid misunderstanding of international norms, and it is not for him to dictate terms over Ukraine.

The United Nations, by virtue of the veto Russia has used, has not been allowed to intervene. No other countries other than those supporting Ukraine are interfering in the peace process. Had Ukraine not prevailed in February and March they would now be under the heels of Russian jackboots.

Finally, Mr Lee should consider why Finland and a centuries old neutral Sweden feel so threatened by their neighbour Russia that they applied to join Nato. Being a good neighbour does not mean issuing threats and thefts of territory. If Russia wants to be considered as a major state with friendly relations then it should start by respecting those neighbours, not cajoling or invading them.

Nick Cole
Meigle, Perthshire

SO rare is it to find any hint of sensible balance in western media’s portrayal of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, I was surprised to find a letter in Friday’s National not only aiming at sensible balance but also virulently attacking Nato. How refreshing! Such courage in David Lee to write this piece – and fine character in my paper to publish it!

I’ve been wary of Nato since early youth when its planes were deployed to fight freedom fighters in apartheid South Africa. David Lee accuses Nato of irresponsibility in pushing eastward even to cross Russia’s red line of Ukrainian neutrality. This policy has reportedly been deplored even by Nato’s own advisers, and David Lee cites Macron’s opinion of Nato leaders in this context as “brain dead”.

I have felt from the first day that Putin’s invasion was a monumental mistake, for, as it seemed to me, this was what US hawks dreamed he might do – billions for the armaments manufacturers, a halt to the ever-increasing flow of Russian oil and gas westward, yet another target for the US Global Peaceforce.

While I don’t quite see the young Zelenskyy as a “CIA-operated puppet”, I have long wondered at his constant appeals for more and more weaponry at such terrible cost to the country of which he is principal guardian. For the people of Ukraine surely peace (hopefully through UN mediation of the UN) is vastly preferable to the prospect of escalation toward an end unimaginable.

And it’s that very prognosis that is much more important for mankind at large than this relatively tightly contained tragedy. We are looking at a potential wipeout of the UK in four minutes, says David Lee, quoting a Russian defence secretary. But let’s relax: on that scale, global human slaughter would take maybe a whole week – and for months or more in tiny, deprived outposts in unheard-of locations survivors would remain, disfigured, impotent and doomed, but with all the intelligence and survival spirit of homo sapiens.

John Melrose
Peebles

THANK you for publishing the letter by David Lee on Friday. This allowed a different opinion to be heard on the Ukraine situation and was very welcome.

R Clark
Gorebridge