Daily Mail:
As a naked display of awesome military firepower, its message could not have been clearer.
Yesterday, Russia marked Victory Day — the anniversary of its defeat of Nazi Germany — in Moscow with a parade overseen by President Putin, who watched as tanks, assault helicopters and line upon line of troops reinforced his bellicose behaviour of recent weeks.
Meanwhile, thousands of miles away, the Royal Navy destroyer HMS Dragon was dispatched from Portsmouth to shadow a group of seven Russian ships — including a giant aircraft carrier and a nuclear-powered cruiser — that was steaming up the English Channel.
Such manoeuvres were taking place with the backdrop of the ever-more-perilous situation in eastern Ukraine, where bandits wielding Kalashnikovs guard roadblocks, helicopters are shot out of the sky, and pro-Russia protesters are incinerated in a burning building.
Indeed, later yesterday, Putin arrived in the Crimea — recently annexed from southern Ukraine by Russia — to witness a military fly-past and address Russian sailors; an act which the Kiev government called ‘a gross violation of Ukraine’s sovereignty’.
The President boarded a boat to sail past a line of Russian Black Sea Fleet ships anchored in Sevastopol’s bay, and greeted their crews as tens of thousands of residents waving Russian flags flooded the city’s streets to watch.
Celebrations also took place in Sloviansk in the east of Ukraine, the scene of gun battles between pro-Russia militia and Ukrainian troops in recent days.
Pro-Russia insurgents in the east are fighting the government in Kiev and preparing to hold a referendum on Sunday on secession.
During the day, as part of his triumphalist rhetoric, Mr Putin hailed the incorporation of Crimea into Russia as a ‘return to the Motherland’.
What more will it take to wake up the world to the threat posed by Russia under its sinister strongman, who’s torn up the rules on which European security has for decades been based?
