Russia

Thursday

The Spectator

Portrait of the week: Russia bombs Ukraine, MPs get a pay rise and Tube staff strike

Home Boris Johnson, the Prime Minister, said of the invasion of Ukraine by Russia: ‘Never in all my study or memory of politics and international affairs have I seen so clear a distinction between right and wrong, between good and evil, between light and dark.’ He was speaking during a visit to the Ukrainian Catholic cathedral in London, where he lit a candle. He flew off to visit Poland and Estonia, and said he was worried that Vladimir Putin might ‘Grozny-fy’ Kiev, which would be ‘an unalterable moral humanitarian catastrophe’. Britain might take in 200,000 Ukrainian refugees after a scheme for close relatives of Ukrainians in the UK was widened

Wednesday

Filip Mazurczak

Are Poles really against immigrants?

Krakow The invasion of Ukraine is being felt across Europe. Already hundreds of thousands of displaced Ukrainians are spilling out west in an attempt to flee Russian hostility. Polish society and the conservative government have, on the whole, supported refugees from their troubled eastern neighbour. A recent poll shows that 53 per cent of Poles are in favour of taking in Ukrainian war refugees, compared to just 22 per cent against. In Germany, attitudes are more divided, with 41 per cent supporting the settlement of Ukrainian refugees compared to 38 per cent against. More than half of the supporters of the radical right nationalist Confederation party, whose detractors have long

William Nattrass William Nattrass

The crisis in Ukraine is strengthening the EU

The EU has a knack for turning a crisis into an opportunity. The Eurozone crisis led to the centralisation of economic powers in Brussels; Brexit consolidated the Franco-German push for EU integration; and Covid became the pretext for EU funds being made dependent on members adhering to the ‘rule of law’ for the first time. It’s looking likely that the bloc will repeat this trick with the war in Ukraine. Prior to Russia’s invasion, the EU was being mocked for its divisions: on Russian gas dependency, on proposed economic sanctions, and on political links with the Kremlin. Now, the bloc is trumpeting its unity. And it has been remarkable to

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Starmer leads on oligarchs at a strange PMQs

Prime Minister’s Questions today had a strange tonal disconnect to it. The session began with a standing ovation for the Ukrainian ambassador Vadym Prystaiko, who was watching from the gallery. Normally, clapping is banned in the Commons, but today the Speaker tore up protocol and MPs from across the house (and journalists, who by convention don’t clap anything) stood up to applaud Prystaiko. It was a moving moment. But it was not matched by the tone of Boris Johnson, either in his exchanges with Keir Starmer or indeed in the rest of the session. The Labour leader chose to focus on sanctions and economic crime. He asked why certain oligarchs,

Martin Vander Weyer Martin Vander Weyer

At least BP and Shell tried to teach Russia true capitalism

BP will offload the 20 per cent stake in Rosneft, the Kremlin-controlled energy giant, that is the residue of 25 years’ effort to teach true capitalism in Russia. Shell is ditching a deal with Gazprom, the other state oil and gas major, that includes participation in the stalled Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline to Europe and an LNG project at Sakhalin in the Russian far east. Western companies in many other sectors will abandon their footholds in Putin’s empire in the coming days. Russia’s one-generation dalliance with the western way of business – as opposed to lawless homegrown kleptocracy – is over. But just because Rosneft pays handsome dividends, let’s

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

No-fly zones won’t work, but what about aid to Ukraine?

Vladimir Putin’s forces are encircling the cities of Kharkiv, Kherson and Mariupol, and a 40 mile-long convoy of Russian armoured vehicles is north of Kiev on the seventh day of fighting in Ukraine. The coming days are likely to see greater barbarity from the Russian President after he failed to get his way in the first few days of the invasion. Those days are also likely to stretch into weeks as Putin lays siege to these cities until they are his. The debate about what the West should be doing to needs to widen out So far the political debate in the West has been dominated by a noisy argument about

Andrew Tettenborn

The Putin apologists of the European parliament

Never underestimate Vladimir Putin, and certainly never underestimate his advisers. Well before the first Russian rockets exploded in metropolitan Kiev, he had achieved a major foreign policy success by sabotaging the EU’s ability to present a united front against him. Ever since the days of Gerhard Schroeder, Russia had deftly weaponised German politicians’ commitment to Ostpolitik and German people’s desire for a comfortable bourgeois life, and this undoubtedly paid off. Before the invasion the EU’s paymaster was less than enthusiastic about sanctions when reminded of the sunk costs of Nord Stream 2 and its short-sighted but temporarily lucrative decision to depend both on Russian gas and the profits it made

Tuesday

Annabel Denham

Britain is paying the price for its fracking panic

Between 1980 and 2005, the UK produced more energy than it needed. Today, we import more than a third of our energy and over half of our natural gas. Households are facing an increase in their annual tax bills from £1,500 to an eye-watering £3,000. While the Business Secretary may have tweeted this week that the current situation is a matter of high prices rather than security of supply, families already struggling to heat their homes are unlikely to tell the difference as they decide whether to heat their homes or pay for food. This was never a foregone conclusion. A decade ago, the US shale gas revolution was well

Steerpike Steerpike

Will grandees return their Russian honours?

It’s five days since Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine and there’s no sign of the pressure letting up. Arms continue to be exported across Europe to aid Kiev’s war effort while financial penalties continue to be applied. The latest sanctions levied against Russian banks include cutting them off from Visa and Mastercard, and consequently Apple Pay and Google Pay.   But it’s not just in the military, diplomatic and economic spheres that Moscow is being targeted. Cultural boycotts threaten to wreck Russia’s aspirations of World Cup glory in Qatar this summer while Eurovision has also announced the country will not be welcome. One act of individual defiance is the return of honours given by Putin’s state to notable

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Boris rules out a no-fly zone over Ukraine

What can the UK do to ensure that Vladimir Putin fails in Ukraine? The Prime Minister has just given a press conference in Poland with his counterpart Mateusz Morawiecki where he repeated his assertion that ‘Putin will fail’ and that the West ‘will succeed in protecting and preserving a sovereign, independent and democratic Ukraine’. The Russian president, he said, had underestimated the resolve of Ukraine and its allies. He also warned that things were likely to get much worse, saying:  Johnson was confronted by a campaigner who accused him of being afraid ‘It is clear that Vladimir Putin is prepared to use barbaric and indiscriminate tactics against innocent civilians to

Joseph S. Nye, Jr.

Has Putin’s invasion changed the world order?

Is Russia’s invasion of Ukraine ‘a turning point in history’? Does it spell the end of the American era, and the beginning of a new Cold War between the West and a Russo-Chinese axis of authoritarians? Some invoke the image of 1939. After assuring the world that he was interested only in protecting his fellow Germans in the Sudetenland, Adolf Hitler annexed the rest of Czechoslovakia and then invaded Poland, setting off world war two. Are the Russians in the Donbass the modern equivalents of the Sudeten Germans? Where will Putin stop? Others draw an analogy to 1948 and Stalin’s drawing of an Iron Curtain across Eastern Europe, followed by

Monday

Isabel Hardman

Liz Truss is having a good war

Liz Truss gave a striking statement in the Commons this afternoon on the action the government was taking to respond to the Russian invasion of Ukraine. It contrasted to the approach taken by some of her colleagues, because it contained a number of admissions about the impact of this action. For the first time, the Foreign Secretary stated that Britain would ‘have to undergo some economic hardship as a result of our sanctions’. This has been implicit over the past few days, but Truss was the first to say it clearly. She added that ‘our hardships are nothing compared to those endured by the people of Ukraine’, and also warned

James Forsyth James Forsyth

‘Staying Switzerland’ on Ukraine is impossible

The striking thing about the financial sanctions on Russia is not their severity, but just how many countries are joining in the effort. Switzerland has today announced that it will adopt the EU sanctions on Russia, particularly significant because it has been the biggest recipient of private transfers by Russians in recent years. The fact that such a traditionally neutral country is imposing sanctions will deepen the wedge between Putin and the rest of the ruling elite. Meanwhile in Asia, Japan, South Korea and Singapore have signed on to the economic measures on Russia. Their willingness to do this is as much about Taiwan as Ukraine; they know that China is

Thomas Lorman

Viktor Orbán has played a perfect game with Putin

On 3 April Hungarians will have their ninth set of free parliamentary elections since the collapse of the communist dictatorship in 1989. The winner is likely to be Viktor Orbán and his Fidesz-KDNP coalition, which is leading in five of the six major polls. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine will not change that dynamic even though the opposition leader, Péter Márki-Zay has called Orbán a ‘traitor’ for his long-standing friendship with Vladimir Putin. Ever since Viktor Orbán began his second stint as Hungary’s prime minister in 2010, he has repeatedly played the provocateur within the EU, tweaking the eurocrats’ noses with his cultural conservatism and hostility to mass immigration. His alliance

James Kirkup James Kirkup

Will Britain welcome Ukrainian refugees?

Immigration used to be the most-discussed issue in British politics. It gets less attention these days, for reasons too varied to go into here. But even though some voters have been focused on other things, there have been significant changes. Some have been good. Others bad. And the bad ones are about to collide with the Ukrainian crisis. The positive bits of the immigration story have mainly been around regulated, economically-driven migration. Britain’s post-EU migration regime is, well, not as bad as it could have been. It’s not as easy as it was for EU nationals to come here to work, but it’s a bit easier for non-EU nationals to

Katja Hoyer Katja Hoyer

Germany has rejected Merkel’s military legacy

‘We are witnessing a turning point… the world is not the same anymore,’ said German Chancellor Olaf Scholz yesterday in a speech that will be remembered as the country’s biggest military shift since 1945. Staring down the barrel of Putin’s gun, Scholz announced a massive and immediate cash injection for Germany’s armed forces as well as a long-term commitment to higher defence spending. Russia’s unprovoked attack on Ukraine has pulled Germany out of decades of complacency and misguided pacifism. Foreign minister Annalena Baerbock seemed genuinely shocked at the discrepancy between Putin’s words during her visit to Moscow last month and his actions in Ukraine. She has said she feels betrayed:

Sam Leith Sam Leith

Has Putin resurrected the West?

I think Putin will have been surprised. I mean: I was surprised. Weren’t you? Not, necessarily, that Ukraine should have been resisting as valiantly as it is; nor even that Russia’s supposedly unstoppable war machine should have found itself out of petrol on a chilly highway from which the road signs have been removed. But surprised by the sheer force and volume and unanimity of the international cry of: no, this will not stand. That is one thing, even amid the unspeakable human cost of the war in Ukraine, to feel encouraged by. If this invasion does, as many have said, mark the beginning of a new order in European

Sunday

Mark Galeotti

War in Ukraine has divided Putin’s court

It is striking how little enthusiasm there is in Russia for Vladimir Putin’s war in Ukraine – but for some, it has become an opportunity to steal a march and curry favour with the boss. Thousands of Russians have been out on the streets protesting against the conflict, despite the heavy-handed and unstinting response of the security forces. Journalists and experts, sports stars and cultural icons have been making their opposition clear as well. Even those within the system, including senior diplomats and businesspeople, aren’t trying to hide how far they were blindsided by Putin’s decision to invade, and how little they appreciated it. After all, even at Monday’s fateful televised meeting

Charles Lipson

The end of the post-Cold War era

Russia’s invasion is not just an effort to retake what was once part of the Soviet Union. It is a push to use military force to overturn the post-Cold War settlement. In fact, the invasion cannot be understood without first understanding what that settlement looked like and why Russia wants to overturn it, despite the high costs. In the 1980s, when Vladimir Putin was a KGB agent in East Germany, the Soviet Union had become an arteriosclerotic state. It was unable to keep up with the US in high-technology arms, unable to legitimate its rule with Marxist-Leninist ideology, and unable to afford the cost of maintaining its empire in Eastern

Saturday

James Forsyth

A new Europe is emerging from this crisis

With every hour that Kiev holds out, the geopolitics of Europe changes more. Germany, which so values its prohibition on sending weapons into warzones, has just announced that it is sending 1,000 anti-tank weapons and 500 Stinger missiles to support the Ukrainian forces. I expect that defence spending will rise considerably in the coming years Germany is also allowing other Nato members to export arms with German-made parts to Ukraine — which will make a material difference to the supplies that the Ukrainian government receives. Yesterday evening, it was announced that Russian banks are going to be cut off from Swift. The EU seems to have realised how unsustainable their position was when