Dot Wordsworth

Why does everything ‘embolden’ Putin?

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issue 12 March 2022

The most emboldened man on earth must be Vladimir Putin. Everything seems to embolden him. Treating Russia as a pariah state could embolden him, wrote someone in the Telegraph, but Barack Obama’s previous attempts to engage with him had just emboldened him, wrote someone else. Liz Truss on a visit to Kiev last month, insisted the West should strengthen relations with Ukraine. ‘If we hang back, that would only embolden the bullies,’ she said. Nato’s humiliation in Afghanistan helped embolden Putin, wrote Colonel Richard Kemp; sanctions hitting the population can embolden him too, wrote Tobias Ellwood.

As Julian or Sandy, on the BBC Light Programme in the early 1960s, might have remarked of Kenneth Horne: ‘Oooh, innee bold?’ Boldness has come a long way from its early days as a quality always to be admired.

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