“Don't believe those who try to frighten you with Russia and who scream that other regions will follow after Crimea. We do not want a partition of Ukraine." Putin, March 18, 2014. Allowing Putin to get away with this was the greatest mistake of modern times. 1/

2/ For years after this, as literally within days Putin moved to destabilize Donbas and cause massive loss of life and devastation, Western leaders insisted that despite it all, “we need a relationship with Russia”, and gave a de facto blessing to the theft.

3/ Western media played a big role in this normalization of Putin’s crime. Western correspondents largely uncritically parroted Putin’s propaganda. Some seemed to admire the annexation themselves and to feel sympathy for Putin’s claim of Western hypocrisy and mistreatment.

4/ Steven Lee Myers of @nytimes and the author of, shall we say, an “interesting” biography of Putin, called the takeover of Crimea “breathtaking in speed” and noted the audience in the Kremlin “wiping away tears”. Shaun Walker of @guardian wrote that it seemed a “fait accompli”.

5/ Western journalists were, of course, engaging in the self-censorship Putin knew they would choose. This gave him the audacity to barely or not at all hide the regime’s true nature. After all, what consequences were there?

6/Take the Valdai Conferences at which Western “thought leaders” sat with Putin on a stage and enjoyed hospitality. Inconvenient questions were ignored but Putin knew what would happen: when they went home, attendees engaged in self-censorship.

7/ Western governments, with the urging of big business, also chose the path of performative measures: boilerplate denunciations and wrist slapping with timid sanctions.

8/Underneath, there was deep reluctance to offend or confront Putin, and indifference to seeing the dismantling of the hard-won international order, based on the UN Charter and the Helsinki Accords, and anchored in the renunciation of the use of force to redraw borders.

9/ A malaise of will, a moral confusion in the face of Ukraine being attacked and her territory violated. Soon the meetings, handshakes and flowers with Western leaders resumed. More spoke of Russia’s “legitimate” concerns.

10/ While every “promise” Putin made was broken right after, Angela Merkel went out of her way to passionately convince President Obama not to arm Ukraine. Catastrophically, she pushed through Nord Stream 2, solely designed to hurt Ukraine and ensnare Germany ever more tightly.

11/ The concern not to offend has been there for long. In the 70s, asked to help Soviet Jews emigrate, Nixon agreed with Kissinger’s words: “Even they put Jews into gas chambers there, it’s not our concern. Maybe a humanitarian concern”. The reason: we can’t offend the Soviets.

12/ Anyone who continues to advocate for such appeasement of the Putin regime on this day of further attempted theft and open disregard for international law, is advocating for a future of lawlessness and terror. We cannot let this happen.