Readers' letters

The problem with Putin
A silverback gorilla in London Zoo broke free from the enclosure. See letter belowA silverback gorilla in London Zoo broke free from the enclosure. See letter below
A silverback gorilla in London Zoo broke free from the enclosure. See letter below

The devastating prospect of Aleppo and its population now being pulverised into submission, recently raised by our Foreign Secretary and caused by the combined forces of Syria and Russia, can be traced directly to President Obama’s empty threat in 2013 that, if Asad used poison gas against his people, he could expect a direct response from the USA.

This poison gas attack was subsequently carried out by Asad but the threatened USA response never materialised due to President Obama’s decision that America should not get involved.

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Unfortunately this pathetic non-response emboldend Putin to subsequently step into that vacuum in what he considered to be the demonstrated weakness of the West and the systematic daily Syrian population devastation, which has occurred since then, is a matter of historical record.

Of course Putin has heavily increased his forces in Syria supporting Asad and his murderous regime under the pretext of protecting Russia’s Naval Base already established there.

Putin has been progressively testing the West over the last few years in any event, seeing how far he can try the West’s readiness and patience to respond to his outrageous antics in flying his planes across our and many European airspaces.

Not to mention his literal invasion and infiltration of his democratic neighbour Ukraine and the recently internationally proven event of Russia’s occupying forces actually shooting down an airliner, killing hundreds of innocents overflying Ukraine.

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Many Putin apologists have stated that much of his behaviour may have been caused by the West’s unfeeling encouragement of many of Russia’s former satellite countries to join the international organisation NATO, thus guaranteeing their safety by all other member nations in declared theory of coming to their assistance in the event of a threat.

The ineffectiveness of this may already have been proven in Ukraine’s case, where the West was not prepared to engage Putin’s Russia in a possible nuclear world war over this proven invasion of his democratic neighbour.

So it appears we shall have to be prepared to endure much more of Putin’s international irrational behaviour. This has been made worse as the West has provoked him further by imposing sanctions on Russia because of his previous actions.

It is certainly strange that one nation can seemingly continue to get away with this behaviour whilst the West is incapable of acting. Perhaps a new American President will yet show the West the leadership necessary to resolve these problems?

E J Tilley

Chorley

animal welfare

Not much of a life for gorilla

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I feel for the silverback gorilla which recently made the news with its aborted escape attempt. The poor creature is probably going stir crazy locked up for life in a zoo with people staring at it for their amusement and entertainment. Ask yourself, how would you feel if the position was reversed?

Not really much of a life, is it?

Jennifer Bookbinder

via email

industry

No UK bids

Some people appear ignorant of the fact that not one British steelmaker put in a bid for the work on the submarines. The work was offered to European manufacturers but no bids were received from the UK.

Roger Bacon

Address supplied

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