Russia

Thursday

The Spectator

Portrait of the week: Sunak vs Truss, London dodges a blackout and 94st walrus capsizes boats

Home In a television debate between the two contenders for the leadership of the Conservative party (and hence the prime ministership), Rishi Sunak said it would be irresponsible to put the country in even more debt by cutting taxes and Liz Truss said that the tax rises he approved would put Britain into a recession. Mr Sunak was criticised for interrupting. A later proposal he made to cut VAT when the price cap on energy bills rose above £3,000 only brought accusations of a U-turn. He agreed to be interviewed by Andrew Neil on Channel 4, but Ms Truss didn’t. Opinion polls put Ms Truss well ahead among Conservative voters;

Wednesday

Julie Burchill

Is self-loathing the British disease?

Whatever one thinks of the government’s plans to send refugees to Rwanda, it was amusing to see this country’s left suddenly finding all sorts of reasons why only the UK – ‘a cake-filled, misery-laden, grey old island’ according to Emma Thompson, patron of the Refugee Council – would do as a final destination for these poor people. It was especially ironic that the place which the great and the good decreed unfit for humane habitation was a country of which liberals have historically approved: France. The phrase ‘French flu’ was coined in the 1950s to describe the cultural cringe of British progressives towards France as the source of all things

Monday

Ross Clark

Putin has Europe where he wants it

Have we reached the endgame of Vladimir Putin’s energy war against the West, the point at which he turns off the gas for good? This afternoon, Gazprom announced that from Wednesday morning it will cut the quantity of gas flowing through the Nord Stream 1 pipeline to Germany to 33 cubic metres per day. This will halve the current flow of 67 million cubic metres and is just 20 per cent of the 167 million cubic metres which flowed through the pipeline before the Ukraine invasion. Ostensibly, the cut is for reasons of ‘maintenance’. That is unlikely to wash. Nord Stream 1 relies on a compressor station powered by six

Friday

Svitlana Morenets

Ukraine and Russia sign grain deal – what next?

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

Sam Ashworth-Hayes Sam Ashworth-Hayes

How Germany’s energy crisis could bite Britain

For now, Berlin can breathe a sigh of relief: after a ten-day shutdown for maintenance, the Nord Stream 1 pipeline is back online. Russia is once again heating German homes, fuelling German industry, and using German money to finance its war in Ukraine. But this happy exchange may not continue; the pipeline is still operating at just 40 per cent of its usual capacity, and Vladimir Putin is warning this could fall to 20 per cent next week. With Germany’s gas reserves just 65 per cent full – thanks in part to state-owned Russian energy company Gazprom’s curious oversight in maintaining them last year – and plans to refill it

Wednesday

James Forsyth

The next PM must be ready for Putin

Westminster is understandably obsessed with the question of who makes the final two of the Tory leadership race, but today has also brought a reminder of the crises that the new Prime Minister will have to deal with from day one.  The European Commission is calling on all EU member states to cut gas use by 15 per cent to prepare for supply cuts from Russia through Nord Stream 1, which reopens tomorrow. With the pipeline only flowing at limited levels, and the heatwave leading to higher energy use than usual, Germany will not be able to lay in stores for the winter. This means that Vladimir Putin will constantly try

Tuesday

Svitlana Morenets

How Justin Trudeau caved to Putin

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

Susan Eisenhower

Enlarging Nato will ostracise Russia (1997)

It’s 25 years this month since Poland, the Czech Republic and Hungary were invited to join Nato. The Spectator’s cover story that week was this essay by Susanne Eisenhower, president of the Eisenhower Group and granddaughter of President Eisenhower. Explore The Spectator’s archive here. Washington, DC When historians, decades from now,  consider the 20th century they will probably be struck by how the major conflicts of the century were ultimately resolved. At the century’s end, Germany, the country that wreaked more destruction on the world than any other power, is economically prosperous, unified and firmly locked within Nato — all due to the magnanimity of its victors. The Russians, on the other hand, enter the new

Thursday

Sean Thomas

An existential war: even wealthy émigrés are prepared to fight for Russia

If you’re wondering where all those urbane, clever, westernised Russian travellers have gone since the onset of the Ukrainian war – a war which has largely barred them from the West – I can tell you that at least two of them will be found in the tiny Armenian hamlet of Gnishik, high in the summery peaks of the Caucasus. I know this because I met them there last week. And what they told me – about Russia, the war, their lives since the war – was illuminating. This meeting wasn’t planned. I’d made the long, pot-holed drive from the sunburned Areni winelands, lost in their redrock canyons, up to

Monday

Susanne Mundschenk

Turkey’s grain diplomacy

Recep Tayyip Erdogan is once again using Turkey’s geopolitical position for his own ends, this time dictating grain shipments from Ukraine through the Black Sea. Turkish customs authorities detained a Russian cargo ship carrying Ukrainian wheat on Sunday, following a request of Kyiv. The Russian cargo ship Zhibek Zholy left the south-eastern port of Berdyansk over the weekend carrying 7,000 tons of grain, worth about £1.75 million. The Russian-appointed head of the occupied region had hailed it as the first commercial ship to leave a Ukrainian port after months of war. He said this would take desperately-needed supplies to friendly countries, according to Politico. The reality is, of course, that

Friday

Svitlana Morenets

Russia’s referendum weapon

Preparations for a ‘referendum’ have begun in Kherson Oblast, the Russian-occupied region north of Crimea, according to Kirill Stremousov, deputy head of the Kherson regional administration and one of Moscow’s puppet governors. ‘Kherson Oblast will never return to an environment of Nazism, debauchery, and cynicism,’ he said. A date for the referendum has not yet been announced, but Stremousov previously mentioned that it could take place in the autumn.
 The residents of Kherson are currently forced to have Russian passports or their salaries and pensions will be cut off Russian troops went into the region at the beginning of March. Since then, the Kherson city has been under occupation. Ukrainian intelligence has warned

Thursday

Svitlana Morenets

The recapturing of Snake Island shows what Ukraine can do

After days of missile strikes, Ukrainian forces have forced Russia off Snake Island in the Black Sea. ‘The enemy hastily evacuated the remnants of the garrison in two speedboats and left the island’, according to the Ukrainian Operational South Command. Russia’s defence ministry appeared to concede defeat, saying that ‘Russian forces have completed the assigned tasks and withdrew as a step of goodwill’. The retreat is huge news in Ukraine, as Snake Island is not only important strategic territory, but has acquired a cult status as a representation of Ukraine’s resistance. Snake Island became world famous on the first day of the war when Ukrainian troops broadcast a message saying:

Sara Wheeler

How inoculation against smallpox became all the rage in Russia

The concept of vaccination evolved from 18th-century inoculation practices and many people contributed to the accretion of knowledge. This book focuses on two individuals: the Quaker doctor Thomas Dimsdale, who, from his small Hertfordshire surgery, pioneered a simple smallpox immunisation; and Catherine the Great, who summoned him all the way to St Petersburg to inoculate her and the teenage Grand Duke Paul. Despite success all round, though, it turns out that anti-vaxxers are nothing new. After revealing the destructive force of smallpox – in one period of the 18th century, 400,000 perished annually in Europe – Lucy Ward, a journalist and former lobby correspondent, recapitulates the history of inoculation against

Wolfgang Münchau Wolfgang Münchau

Cold war: Putin’s plan to hold Germany to ransom

Russia has a long history of using the cold to defeat Europe. The winter of 1812 arrested Napoleon’s special military operation. Hitler’s troops hit the deep-freeze outside the gates of Moscow in December 1941. Now Vladimir Putin has the option to turn off the gas sent to Europe – a strategy against which Germany appears to have no defence. Gazprom, the monopoly supplier of piped Russian gas, has been giving Germany a taste of what life might be like, should Moscow play nasty. It recently halved the amount of gas sent through the Nord Stream 1 pipeline, using bogus technical excuses. Germany, which still relies on Russia for more than

Katja Hoyer Katja Hoyer

East Germans still find it hard to see Russia as the enemy

Not all of Germany is against Vladimir Putin. Sahra Wagenknecht, a Left party MP, recently defended him, saying he is not ‘the mad Russian nationalist’ of caricature and sending weapons to Ukraine was a ‘US-driven policy’ which played a role in provoking his invasion. Her views are quite common in East Germany and not only among the left. The far-right party Alternative for Germany, which has most of its support in the East, opposes sanctions and providing weapons. A recent opinion poll asked whether Berlin should ‘be tough on Russia’: half of West Germans agree, but just a third of East Germans do. Some 58 per cent of East Germans

Martin Vander Weyer Martin Vander Weyer

How to save Oxford Street – and your high street

Oxford Street is ‘a dinosaur district destined for extinction’, says Marks & Spencer boss Stuart Machin – whose plan to replace its ‘flagship’ Marble Arch store with a new ten-storey retail and office block has been referred to a public inquiry by Michael Gove as Housing Secretary, despite winning approval from Westminster council. Machin points out that his real flagship nowadays is M&S’s website, which accounts for a third of the group’s clothing and home sales, while much of its pre-second-world-war store estate stands in sad need of repurposing or right-sizing. And he’s not wrong about the decline of what used to be Britain’s premier shopping boulevard – with its

Wednesday

James Forsyth

Nato is no longer ‘brain dead’

Finland and Sweden will be formally invited to join Nato today. Them joining the alliance will bolster Nato’s presence in the Baltic and make it easier to defend Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia. The alliance now has a clear, strategic purpose again Turkey had objected to the two countries joining, regarding them as too soft on Kurdish separatists, whom President Recep Tayyip Erdogan sees as ‘terrorists’ threatening his country. But having received some concessions on that front, Erdogan has dropped his objections. There’s also speculation that the US will sell F-16 fighter aircraft to Turkey in exchange for its cooperation on this matter. It is remarkable that Sweden, a country which has so

Tuesday

Svitlana Morenets

Is Russian Orthodoxy dying in Ukraine?

Ivano-Frankivsk has just become the first city in Ukraine to have no Russian Orthodox Church, amid a mass defection of churches away from the Moscow patriarchate and towards the breakaway Orthodox Church of Ukraine.  At the start of the invasion in February, almost two-thirds of Orthodox churches were still formally aligned with the Russian Orthodox Church whose leader – Patriarch Kirill – is a close ally of Putin. Until recently, the Russian Orthodox Church claimed dominion over Ukraine for centuries. The 2014 invasion of Crimea dampened its appeal. In 2019 a new Orthodox Church of Ukraine was recognised by Patriarch Bartholomew – the archbishop of Constantinople and the de facto leader

Matthew Lynn

Macron’s Russian oil plan is bound to fail

It will drain Vladimir Putin of funds for his war machine. It will bring down inflation. And it might even be enough to stop the global economy from tipping into recession. As President Macron put forward his wheeze for solving the energy crisis this week, he no doubt had plenty of persuasive arguments. He appears to have brought the rest of the G7 on board for his plan for a global cap on the price of oil. There is just one problem. Like most price controls, it is not going to work. Indeed. It will only make the crisis worse. Of course, everyone can see where Macron is coming from.

Friday

Gus Carter

Zelensky’s peculiar Glastonbury appearance

Volodymyr Zelensky didn’t quite make it onto the Glastonbury line-up posters. Perhaps Michael Eavis, the owner of ever-so Worthy Farm, had last-minute difficulties with the Ukrainian President’s booking agent. No matter. An eight-foot-high image of President Zelensky’s face graced the Pyramid Stage on Friday, right before ageing indie rockers The Libertines belted out their two-decades-old bangers. ‘Time for Heroes’, but not before festival-goers had enjoyed a brief set by Europe’s very own hero. You’d be forgiven for thinking the shtick’s getting a bit tired – but at least Pete Doherty can just about hold a tune. ‘Glastonbury is the greatest concentration of freedom these days,’ Zelensky told the festival. And