Thatcher delivered ‘no hint of humanity’ Putin blast many years earlier than Ukraine conflict | Politics | News | EUROtoday

In 1984, Margaret Thatcher met Mikhail Gorbachev, who appeared set to grow to be the chief of the Soviet Union. The Iron Lady afterwards mentioned he appeared like a person with whom Britain “can do business”. But Mrs Thatcher had a extra disparaging view of Russia’s present chief, Vladimir Putin.

In 2000, Moscow’s nuclear submarine Kursk sank within the Barents Sea, killing all 118 crew, and the UK’s first feminine prime minister launched a scathing assault on the Kremlin chief after observing his response to the incident. Mrs Thatcher felt the lack of British navy personnel extraordinarily deeply, as proven by her writing of non-public letters to the households of all 255 of these killed throughout the Falklands War.

Following the submarine tragedy 18 years later, she mentioned in a speech: “Now we have the new Mr Putin. I looked at the pictures of Mr Putin, trying to look for a trace of humanity.

“I ought to, inside a number of weeks, have identified higher.

“Because you know what happened? They had the terrible tragedy of the submarine going down.

“But it was very attention-grabbing what occurred.

“If ever there is a calamity in the west, the whole of the armed forces will go. They will take everything there immediately.

“The policians instantly will get collectively and say, ‘What assist do we would like? They can have something we may give. If we’ve not obtained the assistance, we’ll get it from another person.’

“There would be anxiety, because what mattered was not the submarine, but the lives of those in.

Mrs Thatcher added: “The attention-grabbing was that the brand new chief of [Russia] did not act rapidly… he did not attempt to mobilise everybody else.

“We didnt know whether we could help.

“We have been all able to go and assist and ship among the small submarines we that we had for simply such an event.

“That, my friends, was very, very revealing indeed.

“They nonetheless don’t worth human life in the identical manner that we do.