Ukraine

Tuesday

Archie Brown

Putin miscalculated. Let’s not do the same

Only the Russian people can decide how long Putin remains in the Kremlin, but the invasion of Ukraine will likely shorten his reign. In a lengthy interview when he assumed power 22 years ago, Putin answered a question about the forced resignation of German Chancellor Helmut Kohl by saying that ‘after 16 years, any people – including the stable Germans – get tired of a leader’. Russians have been more patient, but they didn’t expect to be led into pariah status. Change could come from within the political elite, many of whom are aware how counterproductive this war is for Russia, and some of whom feel shame for the suffering

Charles Lipson

Russia’s war on Ukraine: the lessons so far

The sheer complexity – and horror – of Russia’s war on Ukraine makes it difficult to distil the essential points. To take only one example, the battlefront north of Kiev, where the Russian convoy is stalled, is significantly different from that along the Black Sea, where Russian forces from Crimea have made substantial progress. A third front, in the east, is consolidating in Russia’s favour, though the fight was much harder and longer than Moscow expected. Amid this complexity, it is important to summarise what we know so far: 1. Vladimir Putin’s decision to invade Ukraine appears to be the most catastrophic strategic mistake since the end of the Cold War and

Mary Dejevsky

How close is Russia to collapse?

Russia is now as closed off to the world as the Soviet Union was before Mikhail Gorbachev made his first tentative steps towards glasnost more than 40 years ago. Pretty much all the progress that post-Soviet Russia had made towards becoming a ‘normal’ country has been reversed within the space of two weeks. Vladimir Putin’s presumed legacy – of stability, predictability and hugely improved living standards for the vast majority of Russians – is vanishing before their eyes. In recent days, Netflix and TikTok have joined what had already become a mass western boycott of Russia. American Express followed Barclaycard and Mastercard in leaving the Russian market. Western supermarkets, including Sainsbury’s, are pulling out;

Monday

Katy Balls

Boris Johnson is operating in a new political reality

Boris Johnson is attempting to carve out a role for himself as the figure who can lead the West in its response to the invasion of Ukraine. Over the weekend, the Prime Minister penned an article for the New York Times – in which he set out his ‘six-point plan’ to defeat Putin. The points are closer to general principles than firm action. They include forming an ‘international humanitarian coalition’ for Ukraine and resisting Russia’s ‘creeping normalisation’ of its actions.  Russia’s decision to launch a full scale invasion of Ukraine has certainly stopped all talk of an imminent confidence vote in the Prime Minister over partygate Today Johnson will attempt to

Sam Leith

Remember the Russians who will really suffer from sanctions

When I was in Russia in the very early 1990s, there was a generic figure who seemed to stand at the entrance to every metro station: an ancient babushka in a headscarf and tatty coat, face creased with age and weather, holding out a flimsy plastic bag rolled into a little triangle, begging for kopeks. The collapse of communism had its winners and its losers – and these old women were the losers. The ‘social umbrella’ of the necrotic Soviet system may have provided its pensioners with a miserable existence, as a local explained it to me, but it had provided; and these women, having discovered that freedom is all

Joanna Rossiter

The trouble with boycotting Russian food

As the war in Ukraine worsens, the horrific scenes filling our screens have prompted a visceral reaction from the British public: 78 per cent now support Russian sanctions – up from 61 per cent in late February. Economic sanctions have undoubtedly hit the Kremlin’s spending power ­– and that’s to be encouraged. But what should we make of the broader cultural boycott of Russia that is rapidly gaining pace? So far, Britain’s boycotts have had a peculiarly culinary bent. While Putin continues his onslaught, British shoppers have been encouraged to shun vodka and caviar. Lockdown revived an intense interest in cooking amongst the house-bound middle classes. And, seemingly emboldened by their banana bread and sourdough starter kits, many

Saturday

Mary Dejevsky

Are we cheering on Ukraine to destruction?

We’re just ten days into Russia’s assault on Ukraine and the western world has painted itself in Ukraine’s colours. Cities and towns have hung out Ukrainian flags and lit their public buildings in blue and gold. The BBC has changed the pronunciation of the Ukrainian capital from Kiev to Kyiv. Tesco is driving the supermarkets’ charge to rename chicken Kiev. And leading the cheers for Ukraine’s heroes have been the legislatures, from London to Brussels to Washington DC. MEPs watched a video message from Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, in respectful silence before erupting in applause and tears. The US Congress gave the blue-and-gold clad Ukrainian ambassador a prolonged standing ovation

Nicholas Farrell

Do Russians support Putin’s war?

Everyone is calling the conflict in Ukraine Putin’s war and insisting that it has nothing to do with the Russians themselves. The nightmare would end – they tell us – if only Vladimir Putin were to disappear in a coup. They used to say the same thing not only about Adolf Hitler but also Benito Mussolini. Yet both the Fuhrer and the Duce would have been as powerless as the speakers at Hyde Park Corner if they had not enjoyed the willing consent of a critical mass of Germans and Italians. Meanwhile devout Catholics like my Italian wife recite Psalm 109 – the one used to curse the outstandingly evil

Freddy Gray

The myopic focus on racism at the Polish-Ukrainian border

There are already a hell of a lot of foreign correspondents and human-rights workers at the Ukrainian-Polish border – an immigration problem all by themselves, perhaps. Quite a few of these reporters seem to be desperately seeking ‘racism’ stories, since that is increasingly the only news which the English-speaking media seems able to process. The heart-warming scenes of Ukrainian women and children being given shelter isn’t the story. Because those refugees are white. At the border at Medyka on Thursday the Poles put out barbecued sausages, fruit juice and water for the incoming women and children. There were boxes of toys to cheer the traumatised little ones. At the train

Friday

Justin Bronk

The Russian army is failing – but not enough to lose the war

There have been three major surprises for military analysts since the Russian military invaded Ukraine. The first has been the extent of the difficulties faced by the Russian army in terms of logistics, coordination of forces, morale and mobility. The second has been the failure of the Russian air force to achieve air superiority over Ukrainian air defences, and to operate against Ukrainian ground forces at scale. The third has been the extraordinary unity and effectiveness of the Ukrainian resistance, which has significantly slowed the Russian advance in the north of Ukraine and inflicted major personnel and vehicle losses on Russian forces on all fronts. Unfortunately, none of these factors

Thursday

Alex Glover

Saboteurs and looters: life in Ukraine’s capital

Lviv, Ukraine Russian troops have yet to reach the centre of Kiev. Instead, locals have two more immediate concerns: saboteurs and looters.   Photos shoot across messaging groups. One shows a huddle of supposedly Russian agents caught in a metro station, along with an eviscerated teddy bear in which they were hiding rifle cartridges. The Ukrainians believe that saboteurs have been in most cities since January, marking out key infrastructure and military targets. Another photo shows an agent bound and gagged with masking tape. Blood streams from his head. The looters don’t fare much better. A paunchy man has his wrists cable-tied around a utility pole, his belt used to

Jonathan Miller

Macron appears unassailable

Emmanuel Macron, the President of France for whom few voters have expressed much affection, is suddenly the leader of a nation (and by dint of his presidency of the European Council, the EU) in a de facto state of economic war with Russia. He is wiping the floor with his opponents in the forthcoming presidential election, benefiting from the congruence of international events and his refusal to descend into the electoral arena. With 38 days to go before the first round of voting, the oxygen has been sucked out of the campaign. Macron’s efforts to diplomatically defuse the Ukraine crisis plainly failed – yet his approval ratings have skyrocketed, to

Steerpike

Holyrood offers Ukraine counselling

It’s now a week since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and there’s no sign of an end in sight yet. The casualty lists have mounted on both sides, with the Kremlin admitting to 500 Russian dead, compared to America’s estimate of 2,000 on Moscow’s side. One millions Ukrainians meanwhile are estimated to have fled the country in the past seven days, with Kiev claiming that 2,000 civilians have been killed in Russian attacks. Sanctions meanwhile continue to be applied by a raft of European and Western powers against the embattled Putin regime. Such suffering now appears to have extended all the way up north to the Scottish parliament, where staff and MSPs are

Rana Mitter

Could the Ukraine war save Taiwan?

The phrase wuxin gongzuo – ‘working with your mind on Ukraine’ – has been trending on Chinese social media network Weibo. Essentially what it means is ‘distraction from work because you’re obsessed with the war’. One blog that monitors the site, What’s on Weibo, reports that shortly after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine a page with updates on the conflict had received more than two billion views. Censorship, of course, limits what Chinese social media commentators can say, but there is clearly plenty of sympathy for the dying civilians and fleeing refugees. There’s little doubt that in Zhongnanhai, the leadership compound in Beijing, Chinese Communist party higher-ups are, in a more

James Forsyth

The free world’s new reality

We are about to see brutality in Europe on a scale that will be almost beyond our comprehension. Russia is turning to increasingly indiscriminate bombardment of Ukraine to try to achieve its aims after the failure of its initial military strategy. Vladimir Putin’s invasion has shattered the old belief that the era of wars between European nation states was over because the consequences were simply too grim. The policy of sanctions as a deterrent failed. The assumptions that have driven European geopolitics for a generation are changing before our eyes. Nowhere is this shift more dramatic than in Germany. After reunification, the country’s defence spending plummeted and for decades subsequent

Lionel Shriver

The return of Actual Badness

In the spring of 2020, I advanced an abnormally hopeful proposition: that one blessing that might arise from a pandemic with otherwise few redeeming features was a cultural sobering-up. Maybe we’d regain a sense of perspective about the trivial non-problems of identity politics once finally faced with a proper problem. Boy, was I wrong. Instead, what proved a relatively mild disease, in the big, smallpoxian picture, fostered an even greater frenzy of ineffectual pettiness – park benches wrapped with police tape, government edicts about Scotch eggs, fisticuffs in supermarkets over thin, gap-prone facial napkins. Rather than reveal the content of the culture wars as meeting the textbook definition of neurosis

Nick Robinson

My escape from Kiev

I spent my last night in Kiev in the ‘Presidential Suite’ of a city hotel – what used to be known as the underground car park. The general manager, a man whose name I never knew but who I hugged tightly before leaving, had promised to make it a shelter for guests who hadn’t checked out by the time it was clear that war was looming. We stayed there with his staff, their young children and elderly parents, their dogs and cats too. It is still the home of the BBC staff who remain in Kiev: the reporters and presenters you know as well as those whose roles are just as

Rod Liddle

Has Putin saved Boris?

It was with some relief that I heard that Labour’s Diane Abbott was opposed to the Russian invasion of Croatia, because you cannot always tell with the far left what way they are going to swing. The Stop the War mob, along with 11 serving Labour MPs, have been anxious to exonerate Vladimir Putin and, in the usual fashion, blame the West. Their Russophilia has easily survived the end of communism and the transformation of Russia into a fascist state. But Croatia presents additional problems for lefties – and I know many former communists who will not visit Croatia because of the role of the Ustase during the second world

Dot Wordsworth

The complicated business of swearing in Ukrainian

‘This will interest you,’ said my husband, looking up from the smeared screen of his telephone. For once he was right. It was a Twitter post about a memorable remark during the invasion of Ukraine. Snake Island is a small, bare outpost in the Black Sea near the Danube Delta. When a Russian cruiser invited the Ukrainian soldiers stationed there to surrender, they replied, ‘Йди на хуй’, transliterated as ‘Idi na khuy’. The point of the tweet was that their remark had been translated in a rather American way as ‘Go fuck yourself’, and a more idiomatic version in British English would be ‘Fuck off’. I agree, though it is

Owen Matthews

Putin’s rage: the Russian President won’t be easy to topple

 Moscow How will Vladimir Putin’s hold on power end? Will he be quietly retired by Kremlin rivals angry at a national humiliation, like Nikita Khrushchev after the debacle of the Cuban missile crisis? Deposed by KGB men even more hawkish than himself, like Mikhail Gorbachev? Overthrown by a popular revolt, like Tsar Nicholas II? Or will he die in his bed still the undisputed tyrant of a police state, like Joseph Stalin? Prediction has become a risky business in Russia ever since Putin threw his usual calculation and caution to the wind and launched a rash and fundamentally unwinnable war against Ukraine. But it is nonetheless worth examining where Putin’s