Dr Michael Bassett: Duplicity in the modern world

We have entered a new world where few things are on the level. Nowhere is this more obvious than in Dictatorland. Vladimir Putin’s forces brazenly invaded Ukraine in 2022, breaking a vital stipulation in the United Nations Charter to which Russia signed up at the end of World War Two. It specifies that no sovereign state shall invade another. In 2022 Putin knew that Russia’s veto at the UN would prevent any united action against Russia so long as his delegates weren’t temporarily absent from the Security Council, as they had been in 1950 when North Korea invaded South Korea, thus triggering the Korean War.