Putin

[audioplayer src=”http://rss.acast.com/viewfrom22/thenextrefugeecrisis/media.mp3″ title=”Laura Pitel and Migration Watch’s Alanna Thomas discuss the second migrant crisis”] Listen [/audioplayer]In Istanbul, signs of the Syrian influx are everywhere. Syrian mothers sit on pavements clutching babies wrapped in blankets; children from Homs, Syria’s most completely devastated city, push their way through packed tram carriages begging for coins. Arabic adverts offer rooms for rent. It’s almost inconceivable how many Syrians Turkey has taken in as refugees — around 2.5 million of them so far. That’s almost three times the number who have sought refuge in Europe. And while the Turks are hospitable, Turkey has more than any country should bear. Yet still more refugees arrive. This

If you walk down Holland Park Avenue, down the hill to Shepherd’s Bush, you’ll come across a statue wreathed with peonies, lit by a single candle. Two years ago, in February 2014, the flowers stretched almost to the street curb; the candles were myriad, ringing the statue in ever-widening concentric circles. This is the statue of St Volodymyr, founder king of the Ukrainian nation, set up in the old heart of the British Ukrainian community. In the days around the fall of the Yanukovych government, and Russia’s subsequent annexation of Crimea, St Vlad was the site of nightly vigils, passionate and prayful protests, many of them led by orthodox priests.

The negotiations may be ongoing, but David Cameron has given up waiting for the outcome of his talks with the European Union. The Prime Minister has made up his mind: he wants Britain to vote to stay in the EU — and the campaigning has already begun. His closest allies have been assigned to the task; Downing Street is already in election mode and a strategy is being devised. As with the Scottish referendum campaign, the In campaign will consist of vivid warnings about the dangers of voting to leave. In Scotland it was dubbed Project Fear, and that’s what Cameron is planning again. In theory, the Prime Minister has

When MPs vote this week on Syria, they will have to decide whether intervention is right in principle. But there is another question: Will air strikes actually make a difference? As a defence and security contractor who has spent much of the last few years in Libya, I have serious doubts whether anything can be achieved without boots on the ground. The combined use of all the countries’ air forces alone will never eradicate ISIS anywhere without a coordinated ground effort. Putin understands this: Russia is making airstrikes while letting Assad’s Syrian Army mop up on the ground. By contrast, Cameron’s proposed involvement seems pointless and meaningless. He wants to

The West has failed in its principal, post 9/11 objective: to deny terrorists sanctuary. Islamic State is a terrorist enclave in the heart of the Middle East. Yet, the West’s response to this has been strikingly, and shockingly, lacklustre, I argue in the magazine this week. Barack Obama’s main preoccupation seems to be stressing that US ground troops will not be sent in to destroy Islamic State. While the British response is even feebler, to bomb Islamic State—but only on one side of the Iraqi/Syrian border. Even, the French who are hitting IS on both sides of the border, aren’t sending in ground troops. This lack of Western leadership is

[audioplayer src=”http://rss.acast.com/viewfrom22/jeremyhunt-scatastrophicmistake/media.mp3″ title=”Douglas Murray discusses what Isis might do next” startat=1814] Listen [/audioplayer]When the creation of a new caliphate was announced last year, who but the small band of his followers took seriously its leader’s prediction of imminent regional and eventual global dominance? It straddled the northern parts of Syria and Iraq, two countries already torn apart by civil war and sectarian hatreds. So the self-declared caliph, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, appeared to be just another thug and opportunist ruling over a blighted no-man’s land, little known and still less revered in the wider Islamic world. He was surrounded by a rag-tag army of jihadis, whose imperial hubris seemed to reflect

Yesterday I argued that if it became clear that the Russian plane was brought down over Egypt by a bomb, Vladamir Putin may be forced to reassess his Syrian campaign – especially in light of a strong counterattack by Islamic State on the ground in Syria. Today, as the bomb theory became the only plausible explanation for the catastrophe, the Kremlin is strongly hinting that such a radical reassessment is already underway. Maria Zakharova, a Russian foreign ministry spokeswoman, has today said on a Russian radio station it is no longer ‘crucial’ that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad stay in power. ‘Absolutely not, we’ve never said that,’ she insisted when pressed, adding

It now seems fairly likely that an explosion brought down the Russian passenger airline over Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula over the weekend. One Metrojet official has already suggested that the ‘only explainable cause is physical impact on the aircraft’ and they have ruled out technical failure or human error. If the ongoing investigation proves that to be the case, it will obviously have an immediate and catastrophic impact on Egypt’s already decimated tourism industry. A jihadist would have been able to infiltrate one of the country’s supposedly most secure airports to plant a sizeable explosive device on a specific airline. PR disasters do not come much worse than that – and just one