A strong economy is Britain's best defence against Putin

Imagine it, said Mark Rutte, secretary general of Nato, in his speech in Berlin on Thursday: “A conflict reaching every home, every workplace; destruction, mass mobilisation, millions displaced, widespread suffering and extreme losses.

- JOHN RENTOUL

” Even allowing for his attempt to shock his audience to gain their attention, and even allowing for it being his job to persuade member nations to spend more on defence, his warning made me shudder.

He got the headlines he wanted with this sentence: “Russia has brought war back to Europe, and we must be prepared for the scale of war our grandparents or great-grandparents endured.” There cannot be many people who read those headlines or saw that clip on TV who were not alarmed.

“We are Russia’s next target, and we are already in harm’s way,” he said.

But is it true?

We know that Vladimir Putin wants the war in Ukraine to go on until he has subdued the entire country. We know, too, that this would not be the limit of his ambition for a greater Russia. We know that he regrets the breakup of the Soviet Union and sees the Baltic states, Belarus, Moldova, Georgia and all the other former Soviet republics as territory that should never have been “given up”.