It was a tale of two cities and two speeches — Joe Biden in Warsaw, Vladimir Putin in Moscow. To borrow Dickens’ famous opening line, the worst of times was represented by the Russian leader’s wall-to- wall paranoia. The best, perhaps, was the American’s exhortations to back democracy and the rules-based order. Brief and direct, it was a message of hope.
The war in Ukraine, in Putin’s head, was caused by Nato’s attack on Russia. His twisted logic ran thus: Russia had to defend its people and its soul; Russia’s minimalist aims were to turf out the “Nazi regime” of Volodymyr Zelensky and secure the provinces of Donbas and “Noviya Russiya” — which are parts of Russia anyway, he claimed.
