Open letter to Mr. Putin

Dear Mr. Putin,

Please stop this war before you damage your reputation completely by being responsible for the loss of ever more lives. You are waging a war apparently on the basis of a POSSIBLE threat from the Ukraine and NATO. If there are any grounds for such a threat they are slim, and to try to further support your war with an argument that the Ukraine belongs to you by right from its history is absurd when thousands of people, young people, are being killed because of your actions.

You surely cannot think that so many lives lost already can be ethical when we are asked to agree to unsupported ideas of yours. You will go down in history not only as a murderer but also as a laughingstock.

Can you understand that the end of every war requires the two sides, winner and loser, to talk and reach some compromise? It would have been better, would it not, had you talked with the Ukraine government, the EU, America and including NATO whilst all together at the UN. Having a good, bilaterally trusted referee, a feeling of respect and warmth on both sides, and an aim for compromise would be the likely ingredients for success, before getting the weapons out.

Are you ill? Your enthusiasm for fitness and muscle, together with your swollen face suggests that you might have taken too many anabolic steroids to look fitter than ever and expand your muscles. Or is it that you are on a high dose of steroids for an illness? Either way, know that steroids can make one aggressive and psychotic, perhaps accounting for your unusual behaviour. Do you use any other medicines or drugs?

Now you really are losing your reputation as a politician with so many people around the world, perhaps I can help you. I am an older man than you, a retired senior physician with truly global experience with people, even with government professionals and politicians from around the world. Let me tell you, getting older itself can cause difficulties in memory, thinking, attitudes and emotions. Some of us aren’t aware this is happening, some blatantly ignore the signals of erratic behaviour and utterances, like accusing the Ukraine government of being ‘Nazis and drug addicts’ and making threats to the world about using nuclear weapons and that outside interference in Russia’s aims will result in ‘such consequences as you have never encountered’. I have my bad days, but I’m nowhere nearly as extreme and threatening, nor in such a vitally important context!

Now look at yourself. Do you really want to kill more people: innocent bystanders or young unprepared soldiers – many of them your fellow countrymen, who should build your own country, not destroy your neighbours – or can you be man enough to say, “I made errors of judgement. First, I thought the threats would work, particularly as I backed them up with so many weapons at enormous cost: surely they’ll back down now. But then I made my literally fatal error and started an invasion (fatal, that is, for so many others whom I have sacrificed for nothing except the prospect of more war, perhaps spreading much further). I thought the war would be over in two days, and that no civilians would be killed”

Once the killing starts, fear of the instigator (you) replaces trust. Worse still, people whose close (and often young) relatives have been maimed or killed are likely to hate you. Hate is like a pandemic: like the killing itself, hate spreads internationally with serious consequences.

 As a doctor, I have never considered that having an illness might be overwhelmingly beneficial for a patient, but in your case I think if you are sick or have a medical or psychiatric illness it might be your only hope of ever being seen as anything other than a willful, inhumane dictator, capable of persuading others to kill so many for an unproven threat against you.

 I. Ralph Edwards, DSc (hons), MB ChB, MRCS, FRCP (Lond & Edin), FRACP