Vladimir Putin keeps turning up like a bad penny.
Kicked out of the Group of Eight two months ago over his swift annexation of Crimea from Ukraine, instead of hosting a scheduled gathering of those world leaders in the Black Sea resort of Sochi, the diminutive Russian president will still share centre stage with more or less the same cast, plus Queen Elizabeth, at the 70th anniversary of the D-Day landing in France this week.
Millions of Russians died in the Second World War and Soviet citizens suffered terribly through years of brutal fighting against Nazi Germany. But virtually all of the Red Army’s fighting was done in the east. Only one Soviet soldier is known to have been buried in a war grave on the Western Front.
Prime Minister Stephen Harper, who has arguably used the toughest language of any western leader to describe Putin’s recent behaviour in Ukraine, intends to ignore him in Normandy on Thursday. Ditto for U.S. President Barack Obama. But for the leaders of two of the biggest European countries in the NATO military alliance, it is as if Russia had never seized Crimea and does not continue to menace eastern Ukraine.
France — which is selling the Russian navy two helicopter assault ships for US$1.6 billion, including one to be named the Sevastopol that will be based in the Crimean port city of that name — pointedly refused to disinvite Putin from the party it is hosting. In fact, President Francois Hollande is to have Putin over to dinner on Thursday in Paris. Britain’s David Cameron has arranged to have a private tete-a-tete with the man from the Kremlin at the conclusion of Friday’s ceremonies in Normandy.
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