In a move that reeks of historical amnesia, Vladimir Putin has once again snubbed Volodymyr Zelensky, dismissing renewed diplomatic overtures led by Britain with the contempt of a Roman emperor flicking away a slave. The Kremlin’s refusal to engage – let alone negotiate – is not a surprise. It is a pattern. It is a lesson Europe refuses to learn.
Let us be blunt: the idea that we can ‘talk’ Putin into peace is the intellectual equivalent of believing a tiger will become vegetarian if we just explain the benefits of tofu. This is a man who has waged a war of annihilation on a sovereign nation, who has turned Ukrainian cities into rubble, and who treats international law as a napkin to wipe his mouth. And still, our diplomats shuffle papers, cluck their tongues, and propose ‘renewed diplomatic pushes’. It would be comical if it weren’t so tragic.
Britain, ever the hopeful suitor, leads this charge. Why? Because we confuse nostalgia with strategy. We remember the Cold War détentes, the Helsinki Accords, the moments when dialogue softened iron curtains. But Putin is not Brezhnev. He is not even Stalin – at least Stalin had a grudging respect for power. Putin respects only capitulation. Every concession, every offer to ‘talk’ is interpreted as weakness. And he exploits it with the precision of a chess grandmaster playing a toddler.
Look at the evidence. The Minsk agreements were shredded. The Istanbul talks were a ruse. The grain deal was weaponised. Each time the West extends a hand, Putin bites it off. And yet, here we are again, with Sir Keir Starmer or whoever is currently holding the Foreign Office walking on eggshells, offering ‘diplomatic avenues’ that lead straight to a massacre.
Zelensky, meanwhile, is left in the cold. A man who has shown more courage than a dozen cabinets combined, reduced to a beggar at the table of ‘great power politics’. The snub from Putin is not just an insult to Ukraine; it is an insult to the very idea that principles matter. But principles are cumbersome in a world that prefers comfort. Better to pretend that talking will work, because the alternative – arming Ukraine fully, tightening sanctions until the Russian economy groans, and treating Putin as a pariah – requires effort and spine.
This is intellectual decadence. We have become a civilisation that prefers the theatre of negotiation to the reality of confrontation. We write op-eds about ‘de-escalation’ while children’s hospitals are bombed. We convene summits in Geneva while war crimes are committed in Bucha. It is the moral equivalence of Nero fiddling, except Nero’s fiddle is now a Bloomberg terminal tracking oil prices.
The Victorians, for all their faults, understood power. They knew that diplomacy without strength is mere appeasement. Churchill knew it. Thatcher knew it. But today’s political class has been so marinated in postmodern relativism that they cannot distinguish between a peacemaker and a doormat. They speak of ‘complexity’ and ‘nuance’ while ignoring the simple truth: Putin will only stop when he is forced to stop.
So yes, Britain leads the calls for renewed diplomacy. And Putin snubs them. And the world yawns. Because we have seen this play before. It ends with more dead Ukrainians, more refugees, and a longer war. The only question is how many times we need to watch the same loop before we realise that dialogue with a dictator who believes in nothing but power is a fool’s errand.
Perhaps I am too harsh. Perhaps this time will be different. Perhaps Putin will see the light, embrace Western values, and withdraw his tanks. And perhaps the sun will rise in the west tomorrow. But I would not bet on it. And neither should you.
