Ukraine

Monday

David Blackburn

George Osborne’s grey-haired gamble

From our UK edition

George Osborne has been in retail mode this morning, selling his pension reforms and explaining how pensioners can unlock their life’s savings. The Chancellor has said that the Treasury will work with the Citizen’s Advice Bureau, Age UK and other organisations to provide pensioners with the best possible impartial guidance to transform their retirement. Interested parties can consult the Treasury for more details. listen to ‘Osborne: Russia sanctions would be an 'economic hit' for the UK’ on Audioboo Osborne went on to add that this was what the pension reforms are ‘all about’.

Sunday

Mary Dejevsky

MH17 blame game reflects badly on all of us

From our UK edition

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.

Saturday

Tom Rogan

MH17 makes the situation in Ukraine an American crisis and an EU catastrophe

From our UK edition

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.

James Kirchick

After the horrific tragedy of MH17, Europe must wake up to the threat posed by Vladimir Putin

From our UK edition

How many more civilian planes need to be shot down over European airspace before Europe’s leaders get serious about the threat posed by Vladimir Putin’s Russia? As the smoke clears from Thursday’s horrific downing of a Malaysian Airlines jet traveling from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur, many will try to deflect blame from landing squarely where it should: on Russian President Vladimir Putin. ‘Airliner tragedy in Ukraine shows US & EU erred by not pushing to keep Ukr[aine] as neutral buffer state, not potential EU/NATO member,’ tweeted Stephen Walt, a prominent voice of the ‘realist’ school of foreign policy and a leading apologist for the Russian government.

The Spectator

Will we ever find out what happened to flight MH17? It is getting less and less likely

From our UK edition

The Ukrainian government has failed to secure the crash site, as much as 25 square kilometres of territory, where debris from flight MH17 has fallen. The site is in rebel-held eastern Ukraine and the region's pro-Russian separatists have prevented international observers from the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe from examining it. There are even reports that a drunk separatist gunman fired a warning shot to forestall investigators from conducting their examinations despite assurances from rebel commanders that observers would have safe access to the crash site.

Friday

Lara Prendergast

Spectator archive: A history of passenger planes shot down

From our UK edition

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.

Owen Matthews

The conflict in Crimea will be the downfall of Putin

From our UK edition

Earlier this year, Owen Matthews discussed in the Spectator how the conflict in Crimea will be the making of Ukraine and the end of Vladimir Putin: David Cameron says that Russia’s annexation of Crimea ‘will not be recognised’. Ukraine’s Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk promises that ‘we will take our territory back’. They are both misguided. Let Crimea go: it will be the making of Ukraine and the end of Vladimir Putin. Without Crimea, there will never again be a pro-Moscow government in Kiev. Ukraine will have a chance to become a governable country — a strongly pro-European one with a Russian minority of around 15 per cent. Putin will have gained Crimea but lost Ukraine for ever.

Thursday

The Spectator

Portrait of the week: ministerial musical chairs, women bishops, giant snails

From our UK edition

Home In a ministerial reshuffle, William Hague, who promised to leave Parliament at the election, was made Leader of the House, being replaced as Foreign Secretary by Philip Hammond, who was replaced as Defence Secretary by Michael Fallon. Sir George Young Bt, aged 73, was sacked as Chief Whip. Michael Gove was demoted to Chief Whip. David Cameron, the Prime Minister, said: ‘I wanted one of my big hitters, one of my real stars, one of my great brains, someone who has done extraordinary things for education in this country, to do that job.’ Mr Gove was replaced as Education Secretary by Nicky Morgan, who will keep her portfolio as minister for women. Disabled people got a minister all of their own, Mark Harper.

Camilla Freddygray

Who shot down Malaysian Airlines flight MH17?

From our UK edition

US Intelligence has confirmed that a surface-to-air missile shot down a Malaysian Airlines plane, flight MH17, en route from Amsterdam. Pictures of the wreckage have now appeared, yet no one has a clear idea of who fired the missile. Here are the three most prominent explanations: Pro-Russian Ukrainian separatists In the past month separatists have shot down a number of Ukrainian military aircraft. On Sunday, separatists used rocket launchers to bring down a Ukrainian Air Force Il-76MD military transport plane. But planes have all been flying lower than a commercial aircraft would have been - the range is about 10,000 feet, and the Malaysian aircraft was flying at about 30,000 feet.

The Spectator

BREAKING: Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 ‘shot down’ in Ukraine

From our UK edition

There are reports from Russian agency Interfax that a passenger airliner, believed to be Malaysia Airlines flight MH17, has been 'shot down' in eastern Ukraine by a ground-to-air missile, 50km away from Russian airspace. 295 passengers and crew are reported to have been killed. Malaysia Airlines confirms that it lost contact with flight MH17, from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur, in Ukrainian airspace. Reuters reports that burning wreckage and corpses have been found in eastern Ukraine. Russia Life news reports that Dutch and Malaysian passports have been found on the bodies of the dead. The Ukrainian Interior ministry says that the missile was fired by separatists, and deny categorically that government forces were involved.

Thursday

Victor Sebestyen

It’s not just Putin who misses the Soviet empire. President Bush did, too

From our UK edition

Vladimir Putin calls it ‘the greatest geopolitical disaster of the 20th century’, a viewpoint which explains much of his recent behaviour. Few others anywhere in the world, particularly people who live around Russia’s borders, would agree that the collapse of the Soviet Union was anything to lament. From Riga to Tbilisi and from Kiev to Tashkent, Christmas Day 1991, when Mikhail Gorbachev resigned as leader of the USSR and the Red Flag was lowered from the Kremlin, remains a day to celebrate. With nearly a quarter of a century’s hindsight it still seems astonishing that a great superpower and, with it, an entirely different way of looking at the world — Soviet-style communism — disappeared almost overnight and with practically no bloodshed.

Thursday

The Spectator

Portrait of the week | 3 July 2014

From our UK edition

Home David Cameron, the Prime Minister, rang Jean-Claude Juncker to congratulate him on being nominated by EU heads of government as president of the European Commission. Mr Cameron had insisted the question should go to a vote at an EU summit, where 26 voted for Mr Juncker and two against: he and Viktor Orban, the prime minister of Hungary. Mr Cameron announced a review into why, in the face of resistance to antibiotics, few anti-microbial drugs have been introduced in recent years. Sir Elton John came out in favour of gay marriage for clergy: ‘If Jesus Christ was alive today, I cannot see him, as the Christian person that he was and the great person that he was, saying this could not happen.

Tuesday

Steerpike

London’s party-hungry Russians suffer Putin problem

From our UK edition

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?

Thursday

The Spectator

Portrait of the week | 29 May 2014

From our UK edition

Home David Cameron, the Prime Minister, responded to the triumph of the UK Independence Party in the European elections (which left the Conservatives in third place for the first time ever in a national poll) by having dinner with other European leaders in Brussels, which he said had ‘got too big, too bossy, too interfering’. Ukip secured 4,352,051 votes, increasing the number of its seats by 11 to 24; Labour took 20, an increase of seven; the Conservatives 19, a reduction of seven. The Liberal Democrats plummeted, narrowly capturing one seat (down from 11). Even the Greens did better, increasing their seats from two to three.

Rod Liddle

Ukip are like the Russian rebels in Ukraine, says David Aaronovitch. Seriously.

From our UK edition

The latest spurt of bile from the metro left about UKIP, and the people who voted for Ukip, comes from the extremely self-satisfied David Aaronovitch, a chap who grows more absurd each year as his waistline becomes ever more vast. Next to nobody voted for UKIP, he maintains. The 73 per cent of the population who didn’t vote for them (the majority of these, of course, did not vote at all) wish the party to simply “go away”. I thought you’d enjoy this extract – he is the first of his breed to compare UKIP supporters to the Russian rebels in Ukraine, who are of course another collective bete noir for the likes of David: ‘Ukip and its partisans are the furious folk who always lay militant claim to represent the rest of us.

Anna Reid

Viktor Yanukovych’s palace is full of tasteless treasures – and London auction-house tags

From our UK edition

 Kiev On a cobbled street above the Maidan, an elderly man dressed in fatigues rubs his stubble in the morning sunshine. Would I like a lesson in throwing Molotov cocktails? He picks up a bottle with a long wire loop for a handle, and leads me to a burnt-out public lavatory. A match to the rags stuffed in the bottle’s mouth; an overarm swing, and the bottles smashes against the far wall, flames licking round broken stalls. Would I like to pose for a photo? A young American who has stopped to watch takes up the offer. Three months after protests toppled Ukraine’s president, Viktor Yanukovych, the Maidan has turned into a tourist attraction. The scene of the protests is still an impressive sight.

Thursday

The Spectator

Portrait of the week | 15 May 2014

From our UK edition

Home David Cameron, the Prime Minister, said on television that he was ‘bullish’ about negotiating change for Britain in the European Union, but that there would be a referendum on membership by the end of 2017 ‘whether or not I have successfully negotiated’. In a telephone poll by Lord Ashcroft the Conservatives were found to be ahead for the first time since 2012, on 34 per cent, with Labour at 32, Ukip 15 and the Liberal Democrats 9. An ICM poll said much the same. In the first quarter since visa restrictions were lifted, 140,000 Romanians and Bulgarians were employed in Britain, not counting dependants. Unemployment fell by 133,000 to a five-year low of 2.2 million. The FTSE rose to its highest since 1999, at 6,873.08.

Sunday

Digby Warde-Aldam

We watched Eurovision – so you didn’t have to

From our UK edition

I like Europe, even if this may not be the place to admit it, and I like this moment, when our brothers are forced to make fools of themselves in a language none bar the Irish can speak convincingly. Sauf les Français, obviously. ‘Ukraine will win. Europe has solidarity. You’ll see,' says my European flatmate. But after the first batch of votes, it becomes clear that either Ukraine’s entry wasn’t very good, or Putin actually takes the competition seriously. Having missed both Maria Yaremchuk’s Tick-Tock and the inner machinations of the Kremlin’s ministry of culture, my guess is one or both of those things. Many horrors were committed in the process of the panels’ announcements. Azerbaijan begging approval from mother Russia.

Friday

Fraser Nelson

Exclusive poll: Brits think we’re doomed in Eurovision (and blame the BBC)

From our UK edition

Seven million of us will be tuning in at 8pm tomorrow night for the Eurovision final, rising to nine million when the UK number is played. But what do we expect to see, and do we think it’s rigged? The Spectator's Culture House Daily blog, in conjunction with YouGov, is able to give you an exclusive poll of 1,860 Brits, seeing what the nation thinks about world’s most-watched cultural event. Seventeen years of hurt has led Britain to think that we just can’t win this thing anymore. A pitiful 1 per cent of those polled think Molly’s Children of the Universe will take the crown tomorrow night, a low figure given that the bookies have her at 8-1. Just over half of us think she’ll finish bottom of the table.

Thursday

Peter Jones

Ukraine vs Sparta

From our UK edition

As rebels, terrorists, fascists, foreign forces, activists, separatists, militants, militias, nationalist groups, Neo-Nazis, Right Sector forces — take your pick — spread civil war across the increasingly lawless cities of eastern Ukraine, a pro-Russian commander helpfully commented ,‘We have God in our hearts, and they have cockroaches in their brains’. In 431 bc the so-called ‘Peloponnesian war’ broke out between Athens and Sparta. In 427 bc, pro-Spartan oligarchs attempted to drive pro-Athenian democrats out of Corcyra (Corfu), as a result of which civil war spread rapidly from city to city.