Yesterday, 19th Feb 2026,  the Russia-Ukraine peace talks ended without breakthrough. Next week on the 24th it will be the 4th anniversary of the Russian invasion into Ukraine.  To mark this anniversary I’m publishing a few articles. This one sets the historical background so far as my personal experience is of the ‘Putin effect’.  

My fears have increased over the decades in tandem with increasing grip on power. The subject matter of Putin’s rise to power is too wide for me to cover in a short article. I recommend reading the book by Masha Gesson entitled ‘Man Without a Face – the Unlikely Rise of Vladimir Putin. 

But for now let’s turn to Latvia and my first introduction to the ‘Putin effect’.  I was lucky enough to visit Latvia shortly after it gained independence from the USSR, (Russia, as it is now). It was an interesting and enjoyable visit, and I loved talking to the people there. They were… seemed to me a peaceful, loving nation.  However, now let’s turn to some darker days back in the 1970s when Latvia was within the USSR. On my travels in Latvia, I met two lady university lecturers. They told me of their story of being arrested during the night at their homes and bundled into cattle wagons in a horrid journey of 2 weeks, to Siberia to a gulag, where they spent the next 20 plus years in a hard labour camp. . They were beautiful ladies, but when you looked at their hands, they were gnarled and disfigured by hard labour. They showed me their house, which had been confiscated by the party elite for their Baltic seaside holidays. They explained to me that the KGB lieutenant colonel who was in charge of the operation was Vladimir Putin. You could hear the fear in their voices, even though they were in a free country now, Latvia. Their only crime was to be teaching English literature studies. Effectively, the communist regime of the time was trying to get rid of the intelligentsia in Latvia. 

The lecturer’s fears were confirmed when I visited a farmer whose home is out in the east of Latvia which is within an hour’s drive of the Russian border. The farmer said that the biggest worry he has was the fear of waking one morning to seeing Russian tanks roll across the open plains to the east of Riga, the capital of Latvia.

Western business and governments 

After the rise to power of Putin, I was very surprised by how quickly various companies in the west scrambled around to make deals with Putin, and the Russian newfound major corporations. For instance BP was one of these. By 2022 it had become a major long-term investor in Russia stretching back over 30 years.  Why on earth did Germany agree to the installation of a gas pipeline in the Baltic direct to Germany? Angela Merkel should have seen the warning signs at the meeting she had with Putin in 2007. Putin allowed his big dog to wander near her during a photo opportunity, which many observers viewed as a calculated, intimidating “power play”.

Meeting with a young Russian business executive. 

I have always wanted to talk to a young Russian and find out why there is such unequivocal support for Mr Putin. My opportunity came whilst staying at a beach resort hotel in South East Asia in 2009.  I had a very interesting conversation with a 33 year old Russian businessman about politics in Russia. We were both in the bar enjoying our happy hour drinks overlooking the sea and met. Quite soon, my wife & Egor’s wife left us to our conversation of politics and democracy. He was from the north near the White Sea. His English was very good, having spent two years at Newcastle University. He was a sales manager working for a very large coal company responsible for dealing with eastern Europe and some western companies like EDF. He asked me to be quite frank with my questions so I asked him, “why does he, and so many young Russians support Putin when so many of us in the west fear his motives and his tactics?” I said that I had been to Latvia some years ago and had heard about Mr Putin being an ex KGB colonel and that the Latvians feared him very much.

He dismissed the Latvian view, saying that people in power in Latvia were not democratic and that the country was just being controlled by a few powerful businessmen. When I queried the tactics being employed against the opposition parties in Russia he just simply answered that in the presidential elections in the USA 4 years ago Al Gore got more votes than George Bush, but did not win. I tried to explain that the vote was very close and the Electoral College system could lead to anomalies in such cases. He didn’t seem to be prepared to discuss the intimidation of opposition leaders and journalists in Russia as undemocratic.  I queried him on the control of the press by Mr Putin and he simply answered by saying that the BBC was a mouthpiece for the British government and that Russia didn’t get a fair hearing.

We parted good friends but the conversation certainly troubled me. For instance, Egor at one point said that Mr Putin was the best leader that they had had for a hundred years and he was the best leader in the world, by far. Ho hum! What hope is there for real democracy?

Ukraine is a bulwark against Putin’s Territorial expansion.

In my opinion Ukraine is a bulwark against Putin’s expansionist programme against the West. If Ukraine falls then Putin will expand his territorial ambitions to the eastern European countries.

We must stand fast with Ukraine to ensure their freedom and to prevent Putin from trying to expand his Empire.  He got away with the invasion of Crimea and I think he thought he was getting away with the invasion of Ukraine itself but it has now dragged out into a war which is nearly as long as the WWII with casualties both for the  Ukrainian military forces and the civil population in Ukraine but also for Russian forces who have no choice but to do Putin’s bidding.