The Spectator

Wednesday

April 16, 2014

Vladimir Putin knows what he stands for. Do we?

From our UK edition

Possibly because his oratory is no match for his much-displayed pectoral muscles, the speeches of Vladimir Putin are seldom reported at length in the West. But as a means of understanding the manoeuvres in eastern Ukraine this week, there is no better starting point than the speech he made to the Duma when the Russian parliament annexed Crimea. Lest anyone thinks his words have been enriched by an over-imaginative reporter, the translation is provided by the Kremlin itself.

The Spectator

Runaway runners and other other sporting refugees

From our UK edition

Done a runner Mami Konneh Lahun, a 24-year-old athlete from Sierra Leone, went missing after finishing as the 20th-placed woman in the London Marathon. She is not the first athlete to have done a runner. — In the 2002 Commonwealth Games, 20 of her compatriots failed to return home. — After the London Olympics, 21 athletes went missing, including seven from Cameroon and three from Sudan. — The entire Eritrean football team failed to go home after a fixture in Kenya in 2009. — But the gold medal for asylum-seeking goes to 40 Nigerians who went missing after travelling to Britain in a stated attempt to qualify for the Open Golf Championship. Royal visits The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge visited New Zealand.