Defence spending is a necessity if we want to remain free

‘Putin's victory” reinforces his stranglehold on Russia’

- Stephen Pollard

BY the standards of fellow dictator Saddam Hussein's 100% and former North Korean leader Kim Jong Il's 99.9% wins - which they presented to the world with straight faces - Vladimir Putin's 87% victory at the weekend's Russian elections was a closely fought contest.

But by the standards of democracy and freedom, of course, his "victory" reinforces his stranglehold on Russia.

Not that his hold on power has ever really been in doubt. The failure of Russia's armed forces to suppress Ukraine within days of their invasion led some to hope that Putin might be toppled. But even had that happened, he would likely have been replaced by an even more determined Russian nationalist.

Putin has since tightened his control, almost certainly murdering opposition figurehead Alexei Navalny and further militarising the Russian economy and society.

In that context, there should be no higher priority for the West than ensuring that the invasion of Ukraine is defeated.

When Putin invaded, he not only assumed his army would roll over the Ukrainians within days, he also looked at how the West had reacted to the 2014 invasion of Crimea and how we had behaved in Afghanistan and in Syria. In other words, he saw that while we might shout the odds, when it came to the crunch we always slipped away.