Vladimir Putin brings darkness to the edge of Europe

Vladimir Putin is channelling his inner Trotsky through his dealings and attitudes towards Ukraine. Surely a day of reckoning will soon come, writes Yuliya Tymoshenko

IN 2014, Vladimir Putin discovered his inner Trotsky. For what Russia’s president is now offering Ukraine is a perverse twist on the formula Trotsky proclaimed during the peace negotiations at Brest-Litovsk in 1918: “No war, no peace.”

In doing so, Putin has not only moved to trap my country in a frozen conflict that will prevent both democracy and the economy from flourishing, he has shredded the rules and norms that have kept the peace in Europe for three generations.