Retired Lt Col Glen Grant is now a defence analyst for the Baltic Security Foundation, and he described his despair at the continued efforts for diplomacy he believes are destined for failure and the perceived weakness of the European Union in going toe-to-toe with President Putin. France and Germany have attracted criticism for failing to wade into the Ukraine crisis with the same gusto as it was approached by the United States and the UK. Speaking of France and Germany, he told Express.co.uk: “They are pulling us towards war, those two countries.
“If they had been firm from the outset and said [to Putin], ‘Stop no more, no more agreement, no more, no more arguments about Minsk [the Minsk agreement] – either you pull back or we pull out and we tell everybody in the world that, you know, you’re not doing it’, then it would have been clear seven years ago.”
In 2014, Russian forces annexed the Crimean Peninsula in Ukraine – a region that remains firmly within Russia’s sphere of influence.
The echoes of the occupation of Crimea have been heard by many in the international community as they look to Russian military forces amassing on the Ukrainian border in this decade.
Estimates place between 100,000 and 125,000 Russian troops on the border, although the Kremlin denies any intention to invade.
Mr Grant described how the past seven years of preparation time had afforded the Russian president a tactical advantage the West could have seen coming, and stressed that efforts poured into diplomacy will simply never yield results.
“We could have stopped them a lot earlier, had they realized that diplomacy as an art, or whatever they want to call it, simply was not going to work with Russia.
“But they continue – they carry on as though there is some hope for diplomacy.”
He added: “There isn’t any hope for diplomacy.
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Mr Putin told Mr Macron that the stand-off between Moscow and the West had not been de-escalated in an earlier meeting mere days before.
In a readout of the phone call between the two leaders, Russia said that the West had not adequately considered “key Russian concerns”.
The Kremlin said: “US and Nato responses did not take account of such key Russian concerns as preventing Nato expansion, non-deployment of strike weapons systems near Russian borders, or returning the alliance’s military potential and infrastructure in Europe to positions existing in 1997.”
Paris said on Friday that both presidents had agreed that the tensions should be defused, adding Mr Macron had emphasised the need for Russia to respect the independence of other nations.
However, the new German Chancellor, Olaf Scholz, has remained quiet over Ukraine, with Europe’s largest economy only committing to medical aid and to sending helmets to the ex-Soviet state – a move drawing international scorn.
Germany also blocked Estonia from passing German-made weapons to Ukraine.
Former Polish Foreign Minister, Radek Sikorski, penned a scathing critique of the two bloc nations in Germany daily paper Der Spiegel, in which he condemned them for sidelining countries geographically impacted by the conflict.
The MEP wrote: “Berlin and Paris have achieved little — except that Russia now only wants to talk to the United States about the conflict on the European Union’s borders.”
The US this week announced it would send 2,000 troops to Germany and Poland, and move a further 1,000 to Romania from Germany.
The Kremlin tore down the move as “destructive” to negotiations amid heightening tensions in the region.