Svitlana Morenets

The power one person can hold should never be underestimated. They can take people’s lives, as Vladimir Putin does, or save them as Elon Musk did in Ukraine. Two days after Putin’s invasion, Ukraine’s minister for digital transformation, Mykhailo Fedorov, tagged Musk on Twitter and asked him to help Kyiv with Starlink. The communication centres were one of the first targets for Russian missiles. ‘While you try to colonise Mars, Russia tries to occupy Ukraine! While your rockets successfully land from space, Russian rockets attack Ukrainian civil people!’ tweeted Fedorov. The answer was immediate. Musk tweeted: ‘Starlink service is now active in Ukraine. More terminals en route.’ It was stunning – and transformative.

Shortly after the invasion of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelensky made an offer to Vladimir Putin. Ukraine would drop its ambition to join Nato and would instead stay neutral, he said. It would not align with the West, in exchange for an end to hostilities. It was a sincere offer, and unpopular with Ukrainians. Yet it was significant: Putin had cited Ukraine’s Nato ambitions as the main reason for the invasion, saying it showed the West was somehow threatening Russia. But today, that offer ended and Zelensky is seeking the ‘accelerated’ Nato accession granted to Finland and Sweden this year. Will Nato accept? Jens Stoltenberg, Nato Secretary-General, dodged the question when asked today.

While most attention has focused on Vladimir Putin’s repetition of nuclear threats in his speech this morning, the takeaway in Ukraine is different: conscription has begun. This is deeply controversial in Russia given the war’s high mortality rate, but after the rout in the Kharkiv region Putin is running out of options. After his speech, given at 9 a.m. Moscow time, Russia’s minister of defence Sergei Shoigu announced that 300,000 reservists will be called up. ‘We are now at war not just with Ukraine but with the collective West too’, he said. Putin had referred to this in his speech. ‘The decree on partial mobilisation has been signed. Mobilisation activities will begin today, September 21.’ he said.

If Putin is losing the ground war in Ukraine and running out of troops, what other options does he have? The obvious fear is that he’d use nuclear weapons or attack Ukraine’s nuclear power stations. Last night, the Pivdennoukrainsk nuclear power plant in Mykolaiv oblast, 300 km (200 miles) south from Kyiv, was struck, with more than 100 windows destroyed by the blast. Such plants are designed to withstand explosions although not missile attacks. The reactor was not hit and there (as yet) are no reports of any radioactive leakage.   For nuclear plants to be shelled at all shows a dangerous turn of events.

There is extraordinary news from Ukraine this weekend. An offensive in Kharkiv region, bordering Russia on the northwest, has stunned Russia – which had been moving troops south to defend against Ukraine’s Kherson offensive. Kharkiv region has been left only lightly defended by Russia: Moscow had assumed that Ukraine didn’t have the military strength to open a second offensive, to fight in the north as well as the south. Surprised by Ukraine’s attack, Russia’s weakened defences folded quickly and Ukraine has now liberated more ground in a few days than the Russians had taken since April. The strategically-important city of Izium is now freed from Russian control.

The southern city of Kherson, which fell to Russian forces in the first few days of the war, is one of the places Ukraine would need to liberate if Putin’s army is to be repelled. But what realistic chance is there? Many argued that the Russian occupation is a one-way process: that having taken Crimea, Putin would extend his reach northwards and westwards – with the only question being how long Ukraine could hold off an offensive from its far-bigger enemy.  But that conversation is changing, and fast. This morning, the Ukrainian army broke through the first line of the Russian defence in Kherson region – a move that was only recently seen to be beyond the capability of Ukrainian troops.

This morning, Volodymyr Zelensky signed a moratorium on energy prices – so while gas bills are rising all over Europe, Ukraine will remain unaffected. This honours a pledge he made on his election. Freezing energy bills is a standard populist policy in Ukrainian politics (in a country where temperatures can reach -25ºC and the elderly can’t afford to buy medicine, it’s hard to win without making such promises). But there are now serious worries about whether it could bankrupt a government that needs all the money it can get to fight a war. Energy prices will be frozen until six months after martial law ends in Ukraine: the pledge is good for as long as the war lasts.

Is Amnesty International victim-blaming? The Ukrainian military has been endangering civilians, it said, by establishing military bases and putting weapons systems in residential areas. Agnès Callamard, the organisation's secretary-general, remarked that ‘being in a defensive position does not exempt the Ukrainian military from respecting international humanitarian law’. It was a bizarre statement. Russian forces are attacking villages and large cities with dense populations. The Ukrainian armed forces can’t sit in a field, or put their weapons on a boat and sail away from coastal cities. As well as the morality of shifting the blame on to the aggressor, Amnesty’s statement doesn’t recognise the realities of the war situation.

This afternoon Kyiv and Moscow signed a UN-backed agreement to free up at least 20 million tons of grain from blocked ports. Ukraine said it would not sign a deal with Russia directly, only with Turkey and the UN. As Wolfgang Münchau noted this morning, it marks the first successful mediation between the two sides since the start of the war. This deal will complicate Vladimir Putin’s efforts to strangle the Ukrainian economy. But the Russian leader needs to show countries that are neutral – or more inclined towards Russia (in Africa and Asia) – that he saved them from hunger and rising food prices. Otherwise, Algeria could increase gas supplies to Europe and Egypt could supply Ukraine with hundreds of units of Soviet weapons and military equipment.

When Russia invaded Ukraine, the West was certain that its sanctions were worth the pain. But there always was a question as to whether this resolve would last once the domestic difficulties actually started. This week, western countries moved closer to admitting it might be too much to bear. At the time of the invasion in February, a massive Russian turbine was being repaired in Montreal. It was one of many turbines used to send gas through the Nord Stream 1 pipeline from Russia to Germany. When the Russians moved into Ukraine, it was kept in Canada as punishment. Over the next few weeks and months Russia replied, cutting off gas supplies to the continent.

Boris Johnson’s support for Ukraine looked like a gimmick for many in Britain. Whenever the PM was in trouble, he called president Zelensky. When things got too much in Westminster, Boris popped up in Kyiv. But for Ukrainians, Boris’s backing of Ukraine is no joke: he is a national hero. He is the most popular foreign politician: his approval ratings are 90 per cent, only 3 per cent behind Zelensky. He recently became an honorary citizen of Odessa. Four streets are named after him, and one cafe in the capital even makes a ‘Boris Johnson’ croissant (with vanilla ice cream on top, which is supposed to look like his hair).