Putin

Thursday

The Spectator

How to fix our defence budget mess

With the exception of 1983, when Michael Foot promised unilateral nuclear disarmament, defence has played little role in modern election campaigns. This is not least because the two main parties appear to have developed a non-aggression pact. They have agreed to heap praise upon the armed forces and commit them to ever more frequent foreign campaigns — while simultaneously nibbling away at the defence budget to fund programmes which offer more instant gratification to the electorate. This week, as the news emerged of Russia’s plan to lease 12 long-range bombers to Argentina, the Defence Secretary, Michael Fallon, announced the results of the latest review into how we protect the Falkland

Friday

Daniel Jackson

Scottish nationalism is hypersensitive and insular. So is the newspaper it has spawned

Last year Russia Today launched a poster campaign with a fanciful strapline: ‘This is what happens when there is no second opinion’. The extraordinary implication is that the conflict could have been avoided, if only we had listened to Putin. This is such an obvious fallacy that it’s hardly worth dwelling on. But RT (as it now likes to be known, as if people don’t know what the ‘R’ stands for) is producing lightly disguised state propaganda. The viewers know it and so do the mercenaries that make it. In contrast, Scotland’s new pro-independence daily newspaper – ‘The National’– is written with earnest conviction. Its contributors are devout believers, and

Thursday

The Spectator

Portrait of the week | 19 March 2015

Home In a Budget intended to have ‘no gimmicks, no giveaways’, George Osborne, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, offered pensioners with annuities the chance to cash them in and blow the lot. Borrowing in the coming year would be a fraction of a billion less than feared and the annual deficit was to be eliminated by 2019. The income tax personal allowance was raised. Business rates were to be reviewed. Duty on beer, cider and spirits came down a touch, but not on wine. A higher bank levy was predicted to raise £900 million. North Sea oil and gas producers were offered tax reductions. About 15 million people would have to

Thursday

Jeremy Clarke

Lunch with Max Beerbohm’s brother’s grandson

It’s a silly, chippy complex, I know, but I often feel, on the rare occasions that I am induced to attend a lunch or dinner party, that I don’t belong. This truth or delusion occasionally overwhelms me and I sit there, paralysed, unhappy and silent. It’s a pity. Today we were six for Sunday lunch and so far — apart from knocking over the coatstand, twice, during what one would have thought to be the simple act of hanging a jacket on one of the hooks, and breaking it in two — so good. The chap seated to my left — by a very surprising and agreeable coincidence, given that

The Spectator

Portrait of the week | 12 March 2015

Home Philip Hammond, the Foreign Secretary, said that ‘a huge burden of responsibility’ lay with those who acted as apologists for those who committed acts of terror. Parliament approved new obligations for passenger carriers to restrict the travel to or from Britain of people named as a terrorist threat. The Charity Commission required the Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust and the Roddick Foundation to give unequivocal assurances that they had ceased funding Cage, the advocacy group known for speaking up for Mohammed Emwazi, the British jihadist involved in videos of Islamic State murders. England were knocked out of the Cricket World Cup. George Osborne, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, found himself

James Forsyth James Forsyth

The Tories must commit to spending 2 percent of GDP on defence

At a time when Russian fighter jets are forcing civilian flights into UK airports to be diverted, you would expect defence to be one of the big issues of the election campaign. But it is not. It doesn’t fit into the script that the two main parties want to stick to. The Tories’ long-term economic plan doesn’t have space for any foreign entanglements and Labour would rather talk about the National Health Service than national security. But we do need to have a discussion about Britain’s role in the world and how we respond to the Russian threat. It is worth remembering that if Putin tried any funny business in

Thursday

The Spectator

Portrait of the week | 5 March 2015

Home The man seen in several Islamic State videos of hostages being beheaded, nicknamed Jihadi John by the British press, was revealed as Mohammed Emwazi, aged 26, born in Kuwait but raised from the age of six in London. He was said to have had help with anger management at his secondary school, Quintin Kynaston Academy in St John’s Wood. An advocacy group called Cage produced a recording of him complaining that MI5 had questioned him after he had to turn back from a ‘safari’ in Tanzania in 2009. General Raymond Odierno, the chief of staff of the US army, said he was ‘very concerned’ about British defence cuts. Lance

Sebastian Payne

Podcast: Putin’s empire building, Osborne’s election plans and what Ukip want

Are we heading into a new Cold War? On this week’s View from 22 podcast, we revisit Vladimir Putin’s empire building plans and the Mail on Sunday’s Peter Hitchens debates his intentions with author Ben Judah. Is the West right to mistrust Putin? Do we have the moral upper hand regarding the situation in Ukraine? And should nations always assume that NATO and the EU always have better democratic solutions than Russia? Fraser Nelson and James Forsyth also discuss George Osborne’s interest in the north and what it means for the Tories’ electioneering plans. Will the Conservatives pick up support outside of their comfort areas? Should the Manchester area have devolved

Peter Hitchens

It’s Nato that’s empire-building, not Putin

[audioplayer src=”http://rss.acast.com/viewfrom22/putin-s-empire-building/media.mp3″ title=”Peter Hitchens and Ben Judah debate Putin’s empire building” startat=33] Listen [/audioplayer]Just for once, let us try this argument with an open mind, employing arithmetic and geography and going easy on the adjectives. Two great land powers face each other. One of these powers, Russia, has given up control over 700,000 square miles of valuable territory. The other, the European Union, has gained control over 400,000 of those square miles. Which of these powers is expanding? There remain 300,000 neutral square miles between the two, mostly in Ukraine. From Moscow’s point of view, this is already a grievous, irretrievable loss. As Zbigniew Brzezinski, one of the canniest of

Monday

Alex Massie

Vladimir Putin’s Russia is no longer just an authoritarian state; it is a dictatorship

The murder of Boris Nemtsov, even more than previous assassinations of journalists and other figures deemed unhelpful to Vladimir Putin’s regime, feels like a moment of grim significance. It represents a watershed, dividing Putin’s past from his future. It is true, for sure, that Putin has rarely bothered to conceal his darker side. True, too, that too many people are prone to forgetting his actions – or rather the actions of people close to and supportive of Putin – in the Moscow apartment bombings which eased his path to power. Nevertheless, for a long time now, many people have preferred to turn away from the reality of Putin’s Russia. Reality

Saturday

Marina Kim

Putin may be mad – but not mad enough to have had Boris Nemtsov killed

Boris Nemtsov signed his own death warrant when gave an interview earlier this month to the Russian newspaper Sobesednik saying that he was afraid he was going to be killed on Vladimir Putin’s orders. Perhaps he thought he was safeguarding himself from the possibility of such an attack by talking about it openly. Perhaps he did even save himself from Putin. But in this proclamation, he made himself a massive target – he made sure that his death would be a major political event inside Russia. So killing him became an objective for any number of people who will wish for the unrest which will now follow. “Boris Nemtsov shot dead: Outspoken

Thursday

The Spectator

Spectator letters: Why rural churches are so important, and the best use for them

The presence of a church Sir: The challenge for the Church of England and the wider community is to ensure that our village churches are a blessing and not a burden (‘It takes a village’, 21 February). The Church of England has approximately 16,000 churches, three-quarters of which are listed by English Heritage. Most of these church buildings are in rural areas. There are around 2,000 rural churches with weekly attendance lower than ten. It can be a significant responsibility for those small congregations to look after that church, and one has to recognise that this is a burden that falls on thriving parishes. There is no ‘one size fits

Monday

Dominic Raab

The henchmen who prop up Putin need to be hit where it hurts

If anyone thought Russian President, Vladimir Putin, was a strongman the West could do business with, that delusion has been punctured. Last week, Russian Bear bombers skirted by British airspace.  In January, a UK public inquiry into the murder of Alexander Litvinenko, KGB agent turned UK-based dissident, heard he was murdered at Putin’s behest in an ‘act of nuclear terrorism’ on British soil. And Kremlin-backed rebels are ensuring a cease-fire with Ukraine crumbles, leaving the West looking impotent as Putin’s stare shifts menacingly to the Baltic countries of the European Union. But, are we in Britain doing everything we realistically can to curb Putin’s bullying? Putin’s kleptocracy blurs lines between

Sunday

James Forsyth

We are one town away from a proxy war between Russia and the US

We are alarmingly close to the most serious confrontation between Russia and the United States since the end of the Cold War. A proxy war between Moscow and Washington on Europe’s Eastern border now seems more likely than not. The Americans were always sceptical of the Franco-German attempt to broker a ceasefire in Ukraine. Events in the last few days have reinforced that scepticism and I understand from senior British government figures that if pro-Russian forces take the town of Mariupol, Washington will begin to arm the Ukrainian military directly. This will lead to a major escalation in the conflict. Obama is more reluctant to arm the Kiev government than

Thursday

Anne Applebaum

How Vladimir Putin is waging war on the West – and winning

Last month, the speaker of the Russian parliament solemnly instructed his foreign affairs committee to launch a historical investigation: was West Germany’s ‘annexation’ of East Germany really legal? Should it be condemned? Ought it to be reversed? Last week, the Russian foreign minister, speaking at a security conference in Munich, hinted that he might have similar doubts. ‘Germany’s reunification was conducted without any referendum,’ he declared, ominously. At this, the normally staid audience burst out laughing. The Germans in the room found the Russian statements particularly hilarious. Undo German unification? Why, that would require undoing the whole post-Cold War settlement! Which is indeed a very amusing notion — unless you

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Michael Fallon worries about Putin’s next step: this is what the Russian President plans to do

Michael Fallon is worried about Vladimir Putin repeating his tactics in Ukraine with other countries. The Defence Secretary told newspapers that he was ‘worried about his pressure on the Baltics, the way he is testing Nato’. This morning Nick Clegg said that while there was ‘no evidence right now’ that the Russian President was seeking to do the same in the Baltic states, ‘we should be vigilant when a leader of a nation like Russia starts throwing his weight around in the way that he does, in such an arbitrary and acceptable way, of course we need to be vigilant’. So what is Putin’s strategy? Well, in this week’s Spectator,

Sebastian Payne

Podcast: Putin’s war on the West and the disappearing Lib Dems

Is Vladimir Putin drawing a new Iron Curtain over Europe? On this week’s View from 22 podcast, Anne Applebaum and Ben Judah discuss the new Spectator cover feature on whether Putin’s is winning his war on the West. Is Putin worried about the strength Western liberal democracies or the power of the European Union? How does his influence extend into Britain, France and Poland? And how much important is Ukraine as a battle line between the Putin and the West? James Forysth and Isabel Hardman discuss whether the Liberal Democrats are scared of the upcoming election As the election campaign ramps up, the minor party of this government is nowhere to be seen. Are they being

Adam Sweeting

Why Putin is even less of a human than Stalin was

LBC likes to tell us it’s ‘Leading Britain’s Conversation’, though in the case of weekday pre-lunch presenter James O’Brien you’ll have to sit through a series of bombastic monologues from the host before any punters get a word in edgeways. O’Brien knows everything, and he doesn’t mind telling you. Still, I understand that running a talk show is no job for timid introverts who might burst into tears if callers start giving them a hard time. The trick is pretending to listen sympathetically while being ready to drop the guillotine without compunction (after all, these people aren’t your friends, they’re just statistics for the business plan). Anyway, after last Thursday’s

Wednesday

Ismene Brown

The Kremlin is dictating Russian culture once more – and it’s neo-Soviet and anti-Western

It’s suddenly gone icy-cold in Russia’s arts relations with us and the US. Last year’s Russia-UK Year of Culture just snicked under the wire before the political chill started building up ice in all sorts of unexpected places. The international acclaim for the epic Russian film Leviathan, up for a Best Foreign Film Oscar, was sneered at by the feverishly nationalistic culture minister Vladimir Medinsky. Recently he denounced the film as ‘perfectly calculated to pander’ to western views of a bleak modern Russia, and he has previously proposed that only movies properly celebrating today’s Russia should be allowed either public funding or a release. Director Andrei Zvyagintsev has been a victim

Thursday

Charlotte Hobson

How Putin turned Russian politics into reality TV

‘We all know there will be no real politics.’ A prominent Russian TV presenter is speaking off the record at a production meeting in 2001. ‘But we still have to give our viewers the sense that something is happening. They need to be kept entertained. Politics has got to feel … like a movie!’ When Peter Pomerantsev, a Brit of Russian descent, sat in on this meeting he had recently graduated and moved to Moscow to work as a TV producer. A decade in Russian television has now provided him with the material for his chilling first book. Nothing is True… is more than an evocative travelogue or an insight