For evil to triumph it’s only necessary that good men do nothing, Putin is banking on this

In 1940 my grandmother had to make an urgent and pressing decision. To stay or to go. To leave her Jersey home and become a refugee in England, or to stay and face occupation under the advancing German Army.

She chose to stay, and spent the next five years under Nazi rule, whilst my grandfather built Mosquito Bombers in England.

Those of British origin were deported from Jersey and interned in Germany.

A great uncle was arrested for having a radio (to listen to the BBC). Sent to prison in Paris, he escaped and briefly joined the French Resistance. He was shot seven weeks after D-Day.

Hitler poured 10 percent of the Atlantic Wall into the Channel Islands – even now we still find the occasional landmine.

Slave workers from a variety of countries (Including Poland, Russia, and Ukraine) built the German defences. Islanders who helped such workers ended up in concentration camps.

After D-Day, the supply routes were cut off. Islanders were reduced to levels of near starvation, but held out due to the receipt of Red Cross food parcels from Canada and New Zealand, becoming the only part of the British Isles to have received International Overseas Aid.

The Islands are also the only part of the British Isles on which Nazi Concentration Camps have been located (two in Alderney).

Thus, like many locals of my age, I grew up with the knowledge of the Occupation. Of the fear of the ‘Knock on the Door’, of the value of Freedom, of what Liberation actually means, and also a (slight) understanding of living under totalitarian rule.

What does that mean?

Locally it means I have never been in favour of identity cards. Locally, it has been staggeringly difficult to include our WW2 history in any tourism marketing. But it can also give a wider perspective.

In 2013 I was on a French parliamentarian conference in Moldova. I was party to a conversation between one ex-eastern bloc delegate, and their Ambassador. The conversation turned to Ukraine, and was an absolute eye opener.

It showed how we civilians in the West, just three hours flying time away, were complacent and apathetic about any threat from Russia.

We had forgotten the cold war.

We were more focussed on which oligarch had bought which football team. THEY had not forgotten what it was like to live under Russian (Soviet) control. They didn’t want it to happen again.

On February 24 2022 I was in Austria. Our first ski holiday since the Pandemic. The pictures were of women and their children being evacuated by train following the illegal invasion of Ukraine by Russia. It was appalling and devastating.

I remember walking round the village, on a video conference for our Council of Ministers to consider the implications.

Along with many communities, we responded with aid and relief lorries. Four days later I arranged for an extra £1m to go into our Aid budget. The following Monday it was on the ground, delivering medical trauma kits. Aid continues from our Island, including for mine clearance.

In March I was in New York and Washington. The anger from anyone who originated from an ex-eastern bloc country was palpable. It reminded me of the discussions I had heard in 2013.

In April I was in Warsaw. It is the first time I have been to a refugee processing centre.

The stories will stay with me. In particular, of a lady who had taken her son out of Ukraine to safety in Poland with relatives…and had then gone back to Ukraine to fight for her country. The Polish people we met were visibly angry, to a visceral intensity.

Poland must be commended for the way they have taken in millions of refugees. The UK has to be commended for its quick and decisive support.

This is the greatest illegal incursion in the history of Europe since WW2. For most of us, in our comfortable homes, the war, other than through the impact of cost of living, does not really affect us.

Ukraine is a country 2.5 times bigger than the UK and has a population only 1/3 smaller. It does not ask us to die for them, it just asks us for the tools to defend itself adequately, and to enable it to finish the job.

It is a multilayered fight not just on the battlefields of Ukraine, but in the digital pipelines of social media and wider geopolitics.

The Russians have always excelled at deception, at maskirovka, and once our Western initial anger and shock has subsided, Putin hopes to push this into a stalemate.

“All that is required for evil to triumph is that good men to do nothing,” a wise man once said.

Putin is trying to persuade us to revert to doing nothing. To wear us down. To lose interest.

If we do that, it will push another country into living, yet again, with the fear of the knock on the door, of having seen (and died for) freedom and then having it taken away.

That cannot be allowed to happen.

John Le Fondré is a Jersey politician who was the fourth Chief Minister of Jersey.