“A hyp­ocrite is the kind of politi­cian who would cut down a red­wood tree, then mount the stump and make a speech for con­ser­va­tion.” Attrib­uted to U.S. Vice-pres­i­dent (1893–1897) Adlai Steven­son I, the quote is an apt warn­ing that stri­dent avowals of West­ern lead­ers to go all out to help Ukraine are as much a thin veneer cov­er­ing self-inter­est and hypocrisy, as they are firm and unshake­able policy.

Arms ship­ments from NATO nations to Ukraine, promis­es and plans to end ener­gy pur­chas­es from Rus­sia and diplo­mat­ic moves to keep Moscow iso­lat­ed, are cru­cial. How strict they will be and how long they will be main­tained, how­ev­er, is very much tied to West­ern lead­ers’ domes­tic polit­i­cal aims and ambi­tions, and arms indus­try profits.
Data from offi­cial arms exports reg­is­ters win­kled out by “Inves­ti­gate Europe”, a team of jour­nal­ists from eight Euro­pean Union (EU) nations, found that between 2015 and 2020, at least 10 EU mem­ber states sold Rus­sia a total of 346 mil­lion Euros (U.S. $380 mil­lion) worth of “mil­i­tary equip­ment”. The term can include mis­siles, bombs, tor­pe­does, guns and rock­ets, land vehi­cles and ships.
Sev­en­ty-eight per­cent of it was sup­plied by French and Ger­man firms. How that squares with Ger­man Chan­cel­lor Olaf Scholz’ ini­tial reluc­tance to pro­vide heavy weapons to Ukraine because it could lead to nuclear war isn’t clear.
Accord­ing to offi­cial gov­ern­ment fig­ures, between Jan­u­ary and Novem­ber 2021, Italy deliv­ered 21.9 mil­lion Euros (U.S. $24 mil­lion) worth of “rifles, pis­tols, ammu­ni­tion and acces­sories” to Russia.
It was all legal, cour­tesy of a loop­hole in the 2014 EU embar­go pro­hibit­ing arms sales to Rus­sia in the wake of its annex­a­tion of Crimea and land­grab in the Don­bas region.
Admi­ral Lord West of Spit­head, a for­mer First Sea Lord, described avoid­ing the embar­go through loop­holes as “effec­tive­ly a crime and breath­tak­ing­ly stupid.”

                          ABNORMAL AS NORMAL 

Using a cri­sis for polit­i­cal gain isn’t an actu­al crime, moral­ly cor­rupt though it may be. Sad­ly, from a polit­i­cal point of view it is both nor­mal and ratio­nal, and vot­ers are for the most part will­ing to tol­er­ate if not ignore it if it ben­e­fits the econ­o­my. But most of us would appre­ci­ate being spared tak­en for fools by the façade of pre­tend­ing it’s based on altru­ism or principle.
French Pres­i­dent Emmanuele Macron’s sev­er­al futile trips to try to talk sense to Vladimir Putin were admirable for the effort. But it’s a safe bet the clever (and jus­ti­fied) line he used in the elec­tion debate that if Marine Le Pen had been sit­ting there, she’d have been talk­ing to her banker, was some­where in the back of his mind. If it wasn’t, Macron isn’t half the politi­cian he’d like French vot­ers to think he is.
Then there’s Boris John­son. Giv­en his record, it’s fair to con­clude the British Prime Minister’s leap to be the first leader of a NATO mem­ber coun­try to vis­it Kyiv was as much a cal­cu­lat­ed effort to dis­tract from his “Par­ty­gate” scan­dal woes as it was intend­ed as a boost for Ukrain­ian Pres­i­dent Volodymyr Zelen­skyy. The reck­less war rhetoric pos­tur­ing of his hap­less For­eign Sec­re­tary Liz Truss takes cyn­i­cal polit­i­cal manoeu­vring to new lev­els, all low.

                               THE MAJOR PLAYERS’ VIEW

A head­line in New York Times April 26  inad­ver­tent­ly summed up the U.S. ver­sion of cri­sis prof­i­teer­ing quite neat­ly: “Embold­ened by Ukraine’s Grit, U.S. Wants to See Rus­sia Weak­ened”. The sto­ry quot­ed Defense Sec­re­tary Lloyd J. Austin III as say­ing: “We want to see Rus­sia weak­ened to the degree it can­not do the kinds of things that it has done in invad­ing Ukraine.”
A cyn­ic might inter­pret that as “will­ing to con­front Rus­sia to the last Ukrainian.”
Although it is damn­ing with faint praise, the EU can’t hold a can­dle to Moscow in the hypocrisy stakes. The Russ­ian defence min­istry promised to bomb tar­gets in Kyiv in response to what it said were “ter­ror­ist and sab­o­tage” attacks on its ter­ri­to­ry car­ried out by Ukraine’s “nation­al­ist regime”, mean­ing Ukraini­ans who didn’t gen­u­flect when invaded.
Ener­gy pro­duc­ers, in con­trast, make no bones about where they stand. In mid-March, six­ty per­cent of exec­u­tives at 141 oil com­pa­nies told a sur­vey by the Fed­er­al Reserve Bank of Dal­las they weren’t pump­ing more oil to meet short­falls caused by sanc­tions on Rus­sia — because their investors feared it might has­ten the end of high oil prices.
Sau­di Ara­bia, the Unit­ed Arab Emi­rates and oth­er mem­bers of the Orga­ni­za­tion of the Petro­le­um Export­ing Coun­tries have tak­en a sim­i­lar stand. No sur­pris­es there.
To give them their due, at least the oil com­pa­nies aren’t claim­ing moral high ground. The cham­pi­on hyp­ocrites on that score are sure­ly Ukraine’s neigh­bours Poland and Hun­gary. They have no prob­lem accept­ing (deserved) praise for wel­com­ing Ukrain­ian refugees, while doing the bru­tal oppo­site to Afghans, Syr­i­ans and sub-Saha­ran Africans flee­ing con­flict and repression.
To help ensure the nations that make up the new­ly-formed “Ukraine Con­tact Group” don’t find or use loop­holes for their com­mit­ments, per­haps it would be help­ful to have the words of the ancient Greek philoso­pher Dem­ocri­tus as a podi­um back­ground at their month­ly meet­ings: “Cheats and hyp­ocrites are those who do every­thing with words and do noth­ing with actions”.

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