LETTER: The government must not back losers like Putin

There is an obvious question President Cyril Ramaphosa and international relations & co-operation minister Naledi Pandor should be pondering about our relationship with Russia: is Vladimir Putin going to win?

The answer to this question is simple. As things stand, the best-case scenario for the wannabe tsar is to fade into obscurity once elites in Russia lose patience with him. On the other hand, it may transpire that he is captured or killed, which is not unlikely given the history of these things.

In 1945 Hitler died in a bunker after embarking on a project much like Putin’s “special military operation” in Ukraine. The Russian president’s fellow indictees at the International Criminal Court (ICC) have had similarly bad experiences. Slobodan Milošević died in his prison cell at The Hague in 2006 while on trial at The Hague for war crimes. Charles Taylor was sentenced to 50 years by the ICC and is likely never to be a free man again.  Meanwhile, Omar al-Bashir might yet stand trial before the court, despite our government’s best efforts to prevent this.

The writing is on the wall for Putin. His forces could not achieve their mission: to take Ukraine and subjugate it. They may still be in the fight, but they have already suffered losses far exceeding anything in modern history. In fact, Putin’s failed invasion is perhaps the greatest geostrategic blunder of the century, and it is all downhill from here for him.

Since our government will not take a moral stance on any matter, whether foreign or domestic, one should plead a practical case. When all is said and done, do we really want to have debased ourselves for a man who is not only repugnant in every way but is also one of history’s greatest losers?

Justin de Swardt
Pretoria

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