In an April 23 article entitled “Europe Must Admit Russia is Waging War,” Chatham House, the major foreign policy institution of the British Crown, fiercely attacks Europe for its failure to go to war with Russia, whose alleged crimes include the “slow-motion murder of Navalny,” massing troops on the Ukrainian border, and most egregiously, according to authors Keir Giles and Toomas Hendrik Ilves, involvement in the 2014 “massive explosion” at a Czech ammunition depot. Alleging that the two Russians implicated in the Czech explosion were the same ones responsible for the Skripal poisoning in Salisbury, England, the two authors warn, ominously, that failure to respond to a “direct attack by Russia on a NATO and EU member state” would be “inexcusable and highly dangerous.”
This is an act of war, the Chatham duo scream, and yet, Europe is balking on doing anything significant, making only weak statements on Russia massing troops on the border with Ukraine (urging “restraint"), even seeing Russian troop withdrawal announced last week as a positive development. The Russian actions were tantamount to an “act of state terror” on the territory of a NATO and EU member state, the authors ever more frantically charge; and the Russians may also be responsible for “unexplained explosions” in Bulgaria. Where’s the punishment? Sanctions and diplomatic expulsions are only part of a coordinated response to Russia, they complain—not good enough. Rather, there must be “joint and public recognition that Europe is under attack, and that allies must stand together to confront it.”
