Bob Seely

A dangerous truth is emerging from Ukraine. Kyiv is slowly starting to lose the war against Russia because it is running short of ammunition, in large part because promises made by the EU and the USA are not being honoured. Concurrently, Russia has moved to a wartime economic footing, with 40 per cent of government spending now on the military. The result has seen Ukraine start to lose territory. In the east of the country, where I visited last week, talk is turning to which town will fall next. Soldiers are angry that they are dying because they do not have the ammunition – and specifically artillery shells – to return fire on Russian positions. If this continues, disaster awaits Ukraine and a great danger awaits Europe. The facts are as below.

Can this really be happening? Sadly, the answer is yes. President Putin has just reiterated his threat to use nuclear weapons and announced that Russian-controlled Ukrainian territory will become part of the Russian Federation. Is nuclear weapon use likely or certain? No, not by any means, and we should speak with a sense of proportion and care. Putin wants us to be frightened. But we also need to stop burying our heads in the sand, as we have done with Russia for too long. To minimise the chances of nuclear use – tactical or strategic – we must assume that the threat is real and that at some point, probably as Russian troops face major collapse in south-east Ukraine over the next six to nine months, Putin will either use or come close to using tactical nuclear weapons.

A reply by the Isle of Wight's MP to Freddy Gray’s: Is the Isle of Wight really the best place to launch a tracing app?Dear Freddy, You have written disparagingly about the Isle of Wight, its tech and a little bit about its identity. You said the internet was 'rubbish' and that we live in the 1980s. I would like to challenge that. The internet really does work here. I am aware there’s black hole of sorts in Seaview, where you sometimes stay. However, that is atypical of the Island. I have had Sky’s Adam Boulton, no less, congratulate me on the quality of my connection and I live six fields from the sea, behind a down, in the remote southwest of the Island known as ‘the Back of the Wight’.

When I lived in the Soviet Union in my early twenties, I developed a personal hostility to socialism. I saw the misery it had visited on that society – the political, spiritual and economic harm. I understood at first-hand how the secret police corrupted personal and public life, how state propaganda denied freedom of thought and how the regime hid the slaughter and imprisonment of millions of its own people. I came to the conclusion that whichever totalitarian power had survived World War II – Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union – they would probably have looked much the same by the time of their demise.