Ukraine

The European Council has spoken! We must all come back on Thursday after it has considered its approach to fresh sanctions against Russia. The communiqué from today’s meeting of the Council is full of fine ambition: albeit ambition that was agreed on 18 July. We are promised an extended list of: ‘…entities and persons, including from the Russian Federation…who actively provide material and financial support to or are benefiting from the Russian decision makers from the annexation of Crimea or the destabilisation of Eastern Ukraine, and to adopt additional measures to restrict trade with and investment in Crimea and Sebastopol, at the latest by the end of July.

To judge by much of the western media coverage in recent days, you would have thought that Vladimir Putin had spent last Thursday sitting in the Kremlin, plotting how to blacken his image in the West even further, before settling on the brilliant idea of getting some clueless proxies to blow an international airliner out of the sky. At least, if he had, the line of responsibility would be clear; the western arguments casting him and his country as global pariahs would incontestable, and we could all be contemplating moves not just to isolate Russia, but to haul Vladimir before the International Criminal Court.

The burning embers of an international airliner litter a Ukrainian field. 298 dead. The west blames Putin. President Putin blames Ukraine and the west. Pro-Russian rebels strip the dead and obstruct the investigation. MH17 has made east Ukraine an American crisis and an EU catastrophe. Still, because the US and EU see the Ukraine crisis in very different ways, it’s difficult to say what will happen next. First, let’s be clear about culpability. Whatever the Russian government might claim, the Donetsk rebels have an undeniably close relationship with Putin’s intelligence services. In a few months, thugs with AK-47s have become capable of withstanding the Ukrainian military. They’ve ambushed armoured troop convoys.

Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 crashed in Ukraine after being hit by a missile. It's not the first civilian flight to have been shot down in error though. Here are four other times mistakes have been made in the past 60 years, and the Spectator's responses to them: Iran Air Flight 655 (1988) On 3 July 1988, as the Iran-Iraq war was drawing to a close, a US military ship, the USS Vincennes, mistook Iran Air Flight 655 for a fighter jet and launched a missile at the plane. 290 people were killed: It is ironic that the nation which has done most in the world to further the idea of inalienable human rights should have destroyed 290 innocent lives by shooting down a civilian aircraft on the very eve of the anniversary of its foundation.

Word reaches Mr S of the plight of Mr Alexander Sucenko, organiser of next Saturday’s annual Russian Summer Ball. The ball is said to be in jeopardy because nobody wants to come. It seems that many regular attendees of this staple of the Russian expat social calendar have cried off this year because of the actions of a certain Russian President. It all strikes Mr S as a little ironic, bearing in mind that the Summer Ball is geared towards the exiled Czarist side of Russian culture. Her Highness Princess Olga of Russia and His Highness Prince Rostislav are set to be the guests of honour. Hasn’t the Russian royal family suffered enough at the hands of their successors?