As the world marks the grim first anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Vladimir Putin should give thanks that there appears to be at least one of what Lenin called ‘useful idiots’ left in the West. Step forward – after removing your foot from its usual place in your mouth – the Archbishop of Canterbury, the most Reverend Justin Welby.

Fresh from presiding over a schism in the worldwide Anglican Communion over gay marriage, the Archbishop is now favouring us with his deeply misguided views on Putin’s aggression and its possible consequences.

It may not sit well with Welby’s milk and water theology

Welby has said that ‘when the time comes’ and ‘provided a just peace between Russia and Ukraine can be achieved’, Russia must be allowed to ‘recover’. In an article for the Daily Telegraph, Welby says this is vital to ensure that ‘Russia cannot end up like Germany after 1919’.

Welby is, of course, referring to the Versailles Treaty after the First World War. A deeply-resented ‘guilt clause’ was imposed on Germany, correctly blaming the defeated country for starting the war. The Treaty limited the German army to 100,000 men, and forbade it from having submarines or an Air Force at all.

The Versailles agreement also imposed crippling financial reparations which many blamed for causing the economic misery that fuelled the rise of Hitler’s Nazis. In fact, many historians today believe that, far from the unjust and vindictive measure that Welby appears to think it was, Versailles was actually too mild. Because the Allies did not occupy the beaten enemy as they did after the Second World War, Hitler was able to preach the fake news that Germany had not been defeated on the battlefield but stabbed in the back by traitors at home.

Once he came to power, Hitler ignored Versailles. He flouted the Treaty by flagrantly rearming, building the Luftwaffe, and taking back slices of real estate lost after the war. The Allies did nothing to enforce the Treaty. Their supine inaction ultimately allowed Hitler to take the world into war once more.

Welby undoubtedly means well, but do we really need to be told not to be beastly to the Russians? His suggestion of some vague and toothless ‘conference’ to preserve peace, sounds ominously like the hapless League of Nations and the doctrine of  ‘collective security’ that abysmally failed to stop the fascist dictators in the 1930s.

Such words will likely bring comfort to the Kremlin, but this is hardly the message needed now to strengthen the brave people of Ukraine, who only want modern weapons of war, as they struggle to preserve their freedom and independence against a brutal aggressor

It may not sit well with Welby’s milk and water theology but the sad truth is that in a world of such immoral naked aggression, only armed force and the fierce resistance of Ukraine will prevent future Putins from following his unholy example.