Tuesday’s centre page feature ‘Warm welcome to the world’ by Maxine Gordon (The Press, February 22) provides perspective on the Russian situation now unfolding. It was a two-page spread of babies - newborn innocence. Have we failed them?

I am a child of the Sixties and thus have been living with the shadow of a threat from Russia all of my life.

We had the Cold War; the Cuban Missile Crisis crisis; and now this one, with President Putin.

The Cold War curtain once more descends upon a trembling world apprehensive that this could be it. Do we order instant coffee, watch TV, or fill up with more booze? It brings to mind the Bob Dylan song: ‘If God’s on our side, He’ll stop the next war’.

Our intelligence services should have woken up regarding this tragedy eight years ago when this Russian Ukrainian invasion began.

Frankly we did not have the Churchill stomach. It was to our cost. Today we are paying for our lack of action then.

I just hope that sanity will prevail.

Phil Shepherdson Woodthorpe, York

The toughest sanction

We’re obviously saving the toughest sanction against Russia following its incursion in the Ukraine until last - exclusion from from the Eurovision Song Contest.

DM Deamer, Penleys Grove Street, Monkgate