For the last week we have been treated to tragic pictures of an active war in Europe. Baby boomers like me grew up with the increasing hope that sufficient political effort was being put into preventing war in Europe again. There was a hiccup during the Cuban missile crisis, but imminent danger was averted and the world breathed a sigh of relief.

The United Nations and the European Union have done their best to short-circuit the tensions which can otherwise lead to war. In the current conflict between Russia and Ukraine the EU is not directly involved, and neither is NATO as yet. The United Nations may be a platform for all nations of the world to air their views but Russia has a permanent seat on the security council and can veto any motion sanctioning their aggression. It should be noted that both India and China have not used their vetoes for once and simply abstained.

Indeed, virtually the whole world has condemned in one form or another the invasion of a sovereign state by its much larger neighbour.

Russia has indirectly reminded the West that they have nuclear weapons and could be provoked to use them, but as yet other nuclear powers have not announced an increase in the threat level. We all know that as soon as one nuclear missile is launched, opposing powers will almost certainly reply in kind in the bat of an eyelid.

In the space of a week, our peaceful lives have gained a worrying edge to them. Vladimir Poetin is not someone to accept losing face, even when his target of regime change doesn’t end successfully. He can wreak destruction in a country but that doesn’t automatically break the spirit of the people there. This is no longer about addressing supposed genocide or securing a buffer state; Poetin wants to rewrite history and only his interpretation applies.

Faced with a mission that is not going according to plan, he will become more unpredictable than ever. Nobody can guarantee that he will not launch a nuclear attack, and that should worry us all. Major cities and infrastructure in Ukraine have been devastatingly attacked in the course of a week and none of us knows what the next week will bring. Unless Poetin takes a step back – or is forced to – we can only fear for the future of peace in Europe and await further death and destruction in Ukraine.