The West long harboured illusions about both Putin and
former Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych only to eventually reach the
conclusion they were kleptocratic liars, cold and violent thugs.

This was already evident in the case of Putin as soon as he
came to power with allegations the FSB, the domestic successor to the KGB that
he had been an officer in, blowing up apartments to re-ignite the Chechen
conflict, in the massive war crimes committed in Grozny and against Chechens
and Russian-backed separatism and ethnic cleansing in Georgia. Yanukovych’s two
jail sentences and ties to organised crime should have provided a reliable
guide to his likely brutal behaviour in asset stripping Ukraine, murdering
unarmed Euromaidan protesters and with big brother Putin fomenting Donetsk
terrorism.

Putin and Yanukovych are cold through and through without a
morsel of human empathy for those who have suffered at their hands, either the
600 Russians blown up in their apartments and innocent passengers on MH17 or
the thousands killed, wounded, abducted, tortured and displaced during the
EuroMaidan and Donbas separatism.

Putin’s callousness was evident in the aftermath of the
downing of the Kursk submarine and after the shooting down of MH17. Russian
leaders not only brazenly lied but displayed complete disrespect for the
innocent victims that included 80 children. Indeed, lying has always been
an integral component of Soviet and post-Soviet leaders repertoire.

Passengers remains were left to rot in the heat, their
personal belongings were rifled through, credit cards and mobile phones were
used by the terrorists, and Dutch and Australian investigators are still
blocked from visiting the crash site.

UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay reported
this week, following Amnesty International’s 
lengthy report issued earlier this month, that the terrorist criminals
have abducted, tortured and murdered over a thousand innocent local
politicians, public officials and ’employees of the local coalmining industry.’
Pillay said ‘The majority are ordinary citizens, academics, teachers,
journalists, members of the clergy and students.’ 

Russia unleashed criminals and mercenaries in east Ukraine
whose defeat is imminent because they have never been seen as “liberators” by
Ukraine’s Russian speakers. Putin’s Russian chauvinism has produced a
xenophobic and Ukrainophobic that has destroyed tens of thousands of Russian,
Chechen and Ukrainian lives and hundreds of innocent MH17 passengers.

Putin is calculated and assumed the EU would continue to
talk of ‘red lines’ that would become meaningless. The same was after all true
of the numerous ‘red lines’  issued and
always ignored made towards Yanukovych over the incompatibility of his
imprisonment of opposition leader Yulia Tymoshenko with European values.

But, on this occasion the EU stood firm when it – and the
entire world – became sickened by Putin’s coldness and callousness. Without
Russian massive military and intelligence support the Donbas terrorists would
have long ago been defeated and with Ukrainian forces advancing and  his proxies on the run Putin had to either
admit defeat or up the ante. Sending advanced BUK surface to air missiles was
meant to deny Ukrainians the air superiority that was proving devastating
against the terrorists but ended up instead exposing Putin’s real face to the
world.

Following the shooting down of MH17, instead of backing down
Putin expanded the supply of high-tech military equipment to his proxy forces
and launched missile attacks from Russian into Ukrainian territory, as revealed
in satellite images released by the Pentagon. This calculated affront to
international order and human decency successfully united the West for the
first time in its attitudes to Putin and Russian imperialism.

Yanukovych and his cronies fled to Russia six months ago and
they will never renew their political influence in Ukraine. The Party of
Regions popularity is in the doldrums, its candidate won only three per cent in
the May elections and its oligarch backers are either awaiting deportation in
Vienna to stand trial in the US (Dmytro Firtash) or in hiding in Ukraine afraid
to travel to Europe (Rinat Akhmetov).

Putin on the other hand remains in power with high levels of
support whipped up by nationalist fervour on state controlled television and he
remains a threat to European security and the global order. US Joint Chiefs of
Staff General Martin Dempsey said ‘Russia had made  the conscious decision to use its military
force inside of another sovereign nation to achieve its objective for the first
time probably since 1939.’

If Czechoslovakia and Poland were the first casualties
of Nazism seven decades ago, Ukraine is the first casualty of today’s ‘Putler,’
as Ukrainians describe the Russian President. Europe has finally woken up to
the threat of a new fascism in Europe.

Taras Kuzio is a research associate at the Centre for
Political and Regional Studies, Canadian Institute for Ukrainian Studies, University of Alberta.