Ukraine

Is Vladimir Putin drawing a new Iron Curtain over Europe? On this week’s View from 22 podcast, Anne Applebaum and Ben Judah discuss the new Spectator cover feature on whether Putin’s is winning his war on the West. Is Putin worried about the strength Western liberal democracies or the power of the European Union? How does his influence extend into Britain, France and Poland? And how much important is Ukraine as a battle line between the Putin and the West? James Forysth and Isabel Hardman discuss whether the Liberal Democrats are scared of the upcoming election As the election campaign ramps up, the minor party of this government is nowhere to be seen. Are they being pushed out of the political debate?

What seemed this time last year to be a little local difficulty in Ukraine has metastasised to the point where a peace plan drafted in Paris and Berlin may be all that stands in the way of war between the West and Russia. Over the months, many of those watching, appalled, from the safety of the side-lines, have combed history for precedents and parallels that might aid understanding or offer clues as to what might be done. Last spring, after Russia snatched Crimea and appeared ready to grab a chunk of eastern Ukraine too, the favoured comparisons were with Nazi Germany’s 1938 annexation of Sudetenland. It was a parallel that seemed all too plausible, given the Kremlin’s statements about the need to protect Russian 'compatriots' wherever they might live.

Home Party leaders mercilessly launched 100 days of campaigning before the general election on 7 May. David Cameron, the Conservative leader, said he would reduce the annual maximum household receipt of welfare to £23,000 from the current limit of £26,000. Ed Miliband announced a ten-year plan for the National Health Service, but Alan Milburn, a former Labour health secretary, said: ‘You’ve got a pale imitation actually of the 1992 general election campaign and maybe it will have the same outcome.’ Amjad Bashir, a Ukip MEP, switched to the Conservative party, upon which Ukip said he was being investigated over ‘unanswered financial and employment questions’, allegations he denied.

Home More than 1,100 imams and Islamic leaders received a letter from Eric Pickles, the Communities Secretary, and Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon, the communities minister, saying: ‘We must show our young people, who may be targeted, that extremists have nothing to offer them.’ Imran Khawaja, from Southall, west London, who had posed for a picture in Syria with a severed head before trying to re-enter Britain, pleaded guilty to four terrorism offences and will be sentenced next month. Sir John Chilcot confirmed that the report of his inquiry into the Iraq war, which took its last evidence in 2011, would not be published until after the election. A workers’ dispute left 1,300 houses in Northern Ireland without water; some people boiled snow.

Home The last British combat troops turned over Camp Bastion in Helmand to Afghan forces and withdrew from Afghanistan after 13 years and 453 deaths. Michael Fallon, the Defence Secretary, spoke of ‘whole towns and communities being swamped by huge numbers of migrants’. He later withdrew the word ‘swamped’, but David Blunkett, a former Labour home secretary who used the word 12 years ago, said: ‘I believe that both Michael Fallon and I were right to speak out.’ This came after Angela Merkel, the Chancellor of Germany, responded to an idea of David Cameron, the Prime Minister, that European Union migration could be renegotiated; she said: ‘Germany will not tamper with the fundamental principles of free movement in the EU.

The Ministry of Defence is like a sauna on Sunday. The air circulation system has been switched off and the place is hot — and deserted. Yet when you reach the Secretary of State’s floor, a small team is hard at work. As you enter Michael Fallon’s office, you see why. On an easel sits a map of Iraq and Syria. Tellingly, though, this isn’t the only map on the stand. Sitting behind it are ones of Pakistan, the Central African Republic and Sierra Leone. It emerges later that the one of Ukraine has gone missing. Fallon is 62, but he has the energy of a man half his age. Our conversation is punctuated with regular requests from him to his staff to bring him a map, a copy of the Nato charter or some other piece of paper.

Home England suddenly began to take the prospect of Scottish independence seriously after a poll of 1,084 people by YouGov put support for it at 51 per cent and opposition at 49 per cent. A survey by TNS showed 38 per cent of Scots backed independence compared to 39 per cent opposing it (with 23 per cent not knowing). The pound fell to its lowest for ten months against the dollar. George Osborne, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, in concert with Labour and the Liberal Democrats, promised a timetable for further devolution if voters in Scotland would only reject independence. The Prime Minister and the leader of the opposition agreed to cancel Prime Minister’s Questions and fly to Scotland, in the apparent belief that it would help. Nick Clegg, the Deputy Prime Minister, went too.

Home Britain’s terror threat level was raised from ‘substantial’ to ‘severe’ in response to fighting in Iraq and Syria, meaning that an attack on Britain was ‘highly likely’. Three days later, David Cameron, the Prime Minister, in a hesitant statement to the Commons, proposed that: police should be able to seize temporarily at the border the passports of people travelling overseas; there should be all-party talks on drawing up powers to prevent suspected British terrorists returning to Britain; those under terrorism prevention and investigation measures (Tpims) should be subject to ‘stronger locational constraints’.