Putin's revenge fantasy: Ex‑Defence Minister's stark warning

In an article published in the "Daily Telegraph", Wallace, who headed the defence department from 2019 to 2023, reveals that even before the Russian invasion of Ukraine began in February 2022, he was convincing security advisers that Putin is not driven by logic or a desire to modernise Russia, but by revenge and maintaining his own legacy.

"A bizarre essay that Putin personally wrote in June 2021, titled 'The Real Lessons of the 75th Anniversary of World War II,' desperately twists facts, ignores events, and portrays Russia as the saviour of the world. He claims that the Nazi-Soviet pact, which led to the invasion and dismemberment of Poland, was beneficial for the United Kingdom," Wallace wrote.

"By trying to reshape Russia's role in World War II, Putin blames the United Kingdom and France and completely distorts the Ribbentrop-Molotov pact. He doesn't mention the massacre of 20,000 Poles in Katyn carried out by the Red Army and the secret police in 1940, nor that before the invasion of Poland, Russia trained with the Wehrmacht and sold them tanks. His essay is worth reading only to understand this man,” he continued.

Wallace expressed regret that Russia experts, whether in the British Foreign Office, the French government, or the American CIA, did not appreciate this essay, just like another one, "On the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians," and that in analysing Putin's actions, they were too guided by rational considerations, overlooking the human factor.

Wallace recalls a meeting with his Russian counterpart, Sergei Shoigu, and the Chief of the General Staff of the Russian Armed Forces, General Valery Gerasimov, ten days before the invasion. During this meeting, they stopped maintaining any pretences, and Gerasimov told Wallace that Russia would never allow itself to be humiliated again.

"These people at the top of Russia believe they are rewriting history, rectifying the humiliation they felt at the end of the Cold War and settling scores from hundreds of years. While Russia is doing a very good job of once again humiliating itself with its actions, we should realise that in Putin's version of history, it is the United Kingdom, not the United States, at the heart of Russia’s failures,” Wallace wrote.

"In Putin's distorted view of the world, we were behind the Crimean War and the tsars' defeats, we were behind the rise of Hitler, we were behind the counter-revolution, and our spies were behind the end of the Soviet Union. The United Kingdom is in Putin's crosshairs. One of the highest-ranking members of the Russian siloviki recently said, 'We know that the United Kingdom is behind the invasion of Kursk.' We weren't. Putin is coming after us. We must be prepared for the inevitable,” the former Defence Minister warned.