Following the destruction of the Nova Kakhovka dam in Ukraine, politicians in the West have followed the familiar dance of condemnation. ‘If it’s intentional,’ said PM Rishi Sunak, it would be ‘the largest attack on civilian infrastructure in Ukraine since the start of the war’ and represent ‘new lows’ in Russian aggression. France’s President Macron described it as ‘an atrocious act, which is endangering populations.’ Olaf Scholz, Chancellor of Germany, talked about the importance of continuing to ‘support Ukraine for as long as necessary’, while the EU spluttered that ‘attacks on critical civilian infrastructure may amount to war crimes.’

If it’s proved beyond doubt that Russia is culpable for the calamity, will we get more than words?

A windy outing, then, for the platitudes of western indignation. Yet, if it’s proved beyond doubt that Russia is culpable for the calamity, will we get more than words? ‘Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it,’ goes Santayana’s oft-quoted aphorism. Missing from any statement on this horrific event are possible reprisals once blame can be established.

One’s thoughts turn to Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014. There, with a mixture of disinformation, opportunism, bullying and chicanery the Kremlin was able to steal back a piece of strategic territory that had been gifted to Ukraine six decades before. Then as now, politicians reacted with harsh words. ‘The UK condemn in the strongest terms Russia’s flagrant disregard of Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity,’ said then-Foreign Secretary William Hague.  From Nato secretary general Anders Fogh Rasmussen: ‘Russia continues to violate Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity and remains in blatant breach of its international commitments… Crimea’s annexation is illegal and illegitimate and Nato allies will not recognise it.’ Obama professed he and his administration were ‘deeply concerned by events in Ukraine’ and spoke of the sanctions the US (along with the EU) would impose.

Yet the sanctions when they came – largely inflicted on banks, individuals and imports – they proved woefully inadequate. And to a great extent it was business as usual between Russia and the West. Europe continued its dangerous dependency on Russian fuels, while Britain went on laundering the money of some of the country’s most nefarious oligarchs.

As the writer Mikhail Shishkin pointed out in his book My Russia, the Kremlin had concluded ‘that any crime will go unpunished… the reborn empire has invaded a sovereign state in Europe, annexed a large part of it and is conducting a war that has cost 10,000 lives so far – but not a single country saw fit to boycott the Fifa World Cup in Russia.’

Putin, alert to weakness, learned a lesson from the first western sanctions. And as the world knows, he subsequently went on to launch a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 and the rest is an ongoing, tragic history – one that might well have been avoided.  As Winston Churchill put it after the Stresa Conference in 1935: ‘When the situation was manageable it was neglected, and now that it is thoroughly out of hand we apply too late the remedies which then might have effected a cure.’

Perhaps the facts of this abysmal manmade disaster bear restating: whole villages and towns underwater, thousands uprooted from their homes, civilian deaths now reported, a widespread lack of drinking water, and a state of emergency declared in Kherson with up to 40,000, according to regional governor Vladimir Saldo, still in the flooded areas.

There is huge damage to regional farming. Ukraine’s agriculture ministry claims that about 94 per cent of irrigation systems in the Kherson region have been left without water. Ten thousand hectares of farmland are expected to be submerged, with the risk of fields in the south of Ukraine – up to half a million hectares – turning in ‘into deserts.’ There are now credible fears of floating mines, cholera outbreaks and dangerous system failures at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, the largest of its kind in Europe.

Ukrainian friends are, for the first time, openly despairing. Putin is destroying their country’s future and they cannot see any hope of making it habitable once again. A thought has crossed many people’s minds which western governments would do well to ponder. If Putin and his commanders are prepared to do this, what are they not prepared to do? One spoke to me with unaccustomed bitterness: ‘For the first time today, I felt how unfair it was that Ukraine is having to fight this war alone. Why can’t another nation, just for once, take the hit?’

Though several western journalists have made their own readings of the situation crystal clear, the US appears to be unwilling to make any but the most guarded statements, with recent reports saying only that they are ‘leaning towards’ accusing Russia of responsibility. Nor did the French or British representatives at the UN say there was definitive evidence of Russian guilt. Meanwhile, at the UN Security Council, both Russia and Ukraine hurl accusations at each other. Russia claims that the destruction of Kakhovka was ‘deliberate sabotage undertaken by Kyiv’. Ukraine says the Kremlin is resorting to ‘scorched earth tactics’ and that Russia is ‘floundering again in the mud of lies.’ Perhaps the West’s softly-softly approach here amidst the fog of war is something to be admired, but many will agree all too readily with American UN Ambassador Robert Wood: ‘Why would Ukraine do this to its own territory and people, flood its land, force tens of thousands of people to leave their homes – it doesn’t make sense.’

Other questions remain. Was the explosion deliberate or simply a cock-up by ham-fisted troops? One current theory on Telegram channels is that the explosives were put in place to be ignited at a future date but set off prematurely by accident – hence the deaths of Russian soldiers on the left bank of the Dnipro. This is plausible but completely unproven and possibly unprovable. And what should the West’s response be, were it the case?

Whatever the facts of it, options clearly are limited. What further sanctions could there be? Could you successfully expel Russia from international bodies when countries like China and India hold a veto? Will giving Ukraine the greenlight and the weaponry to attack installations inside Russia escalate the war to dangerous levels? Yet if there’s one thing Putin sees more clearly than the dilemmas of the West it’s the cheapness of western rhetoric, when delivered on high from a state of paralysis. As the world looks on appalled, a strong response must be given, beyond the pro forma chidings of leaders caught in the headlights.

For the alternative is the worst option of all: that we should be condemned, through the timorousness, blindness and amnesia of our governments, to fail to learn the lessons of the last nine years. This time, perhaps, with a far greater human catastrophe.