Olena Zelenska, Ukraine’s First Lady, is a remarkable woman. I listened to her in a packed meeting room in Westminster as she talked of repeated rape and sexual torture. This is what ‘liberation’ means in Russian. She spelled out how Vladimir Putin is using the desecration of women on an industrial scale. Women as old as 84 have been raped by his troops. Their youngest victim was just four. ‘We will not surrender,’ Madame Zelenska said, ‘but victory is not the only thing we need. We need justice.’ This demure, neat figure seemed so slight in the historic surroundings of Committee Room 14, yet her words beat down upon us. Women as defiant as Olena Zelenska will never forget or forgive. Even if Putin occupied every inch of Ukrainian territory, he could never achieve victory. The anger of Ukraine’s women is too great for that.
I’ve spent the week dining with political opponents. Chris Evans is a Welsh Labour MP, the sort of dinner companion who might make my chief whip squirm. But I bumped into him during the royal funeral preparations and found he has a gift not only for explaining his views with courtesy but also for listening. That makes him a rare political beast. He’s written two gripping books in the past couple of years on controversial sporting stars – the football manager Don Revie and the notorious heavyweight boxer Freddie Mills – and frankly I’m hoping Labour loses the next election simply so he can keep on writing. I also met David Willoughby de Broke. He’s a non-affiliated peer, formerly Ukip, and he knows his own mind – so much so that he refused to participate in a scheme dreamt up by the Lords authorities entitled ‘Valuing Everyone training’.
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