Europe’s Return to Its Darkest Hour

Vladimir Putin has committed a criminal act, a crime against humanity. Autocrats need to know that they will pay a very high price.

What seemed inconceivable just a few weeks ago, the broad invasion by Russia of a sovereign country — recognized by the U.N. Charter and backed, at least politically, by the EU and the United States — has occurred with violence and an intensity that has taken most of the world’s foreign ministries by surprise.

Nothing has deterred the reckless determination of Vladimir Putin, who is undoubtedly convinced — as Adolf Hitler was in his time — that Western democracies, weakened by servitude to public opinion, will capitulate and agree to compromise. At best, it will mean the hijacking of Ukraine, stripped of its strategic areas in the Black Sea and its ethnic Russian regions; at worst, outright annexation to a new, ever-expanding Russian empire.

The desperate words of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, uttered as Russian tanks approached Kyiv, the country’s capital, will resonate for years to come, warning Europe that other countries will suffer the same fate as theirs if the despot is not stopped on the battlefield.

But yesterday, it was too late for anything but varying degrees of condemnation, threats of harsh economic response and the deployment of forces by those nations now sheltering under the NATO umbrella, having shaken off Soviet oppression. This was not the case in Ukraine and, today, one might wonder whether Putin would have acted in the same way if he had to fight against Western armies.

But this is no longer a time for lamentation, but for decision. The Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe emphasized that the Russian president deliberately and criminally attacked the international legal order in a crime against humanity, returning Europe to its darkest hour. Through the singular imposition of force, Putin is breaking any convention among civilized nations and is becoming a de facto sour note in the international concert. His actions cannot go unchallenged, if only because there are other powers with the same appetite for imperial restoration, such as China over Taiwan — but others, as well, which might be tempted to take the expeditious path of military force.

It must be brought home to autocrats that the price to be paid for their actions will be very high. They will be able, through brutal repression, to silence internal protests — thousands of Russian citizens who have dared to reject the aggression against Ukraine have been arrested by the political police — but they must feel that the world they used to know has become very small, reduced to their own borders.

At this point, sanctions must also target those individuals who make the decisions, sustain the regime or benefit from it: Putin and his ministers, of course, but also the presidents and owners of the large industrial, commercial and banking conglomerates that make up the Kremlin’s power structure.

There is no doubt that the EU and, therefore, Spain, will be economically affected by the loss of a sizable Russian market and that the upheavals in the energy and raw materials sectors will mean added cost to domestic economies.

But there is no choice. With one caveat to be heeded: The proven capacity of Russian propaganda to penetrate public opinion in our free societies will be used without hesitation to politically destabilize the EU as a whole. We will all be responsible for ensuring that violence and arbitrariness do not triumph.