Russia

Thursday

The Spectator

Letters: It’s time for the common cup to return to communion

The Bull of Oman Sir: There was one significant omission in the cast of characters mentioned by Charles Moore in his notes on the Sultan of Oman’s armed forces (Notes, 19 February): General Sir Timothy Creasey KCB . The omission is all the more surprising given the key role Margaret Thatcher played in getting General Tim to take up the Sultan’s invitation to go back out to Oman as deputy commander in chief and chief of defence staff. Having been instrumental in achieving a satisfactory resolution of the insurrection in Dhofar as a senior loan service officer, General Tim was highly regarded by the Sultan but he was not keen

The Spectator

Portrait of the week: Storms rage, Covid curbs end and Russia’s ‘renewed invasion’

Home Boris Johnson, the Prime Minister, announced, in the House of Commons, sanctions against Russia after its ‘renewed invasion’ of Ukraine. These included the freezing of five banks’ assets and those of three Russian billionaires (Gennady Timchenko, Boris Rotenberg and his nephew Igor Rotenberg). The price of Brent crude oil reached a seven-year high of $99.38. A day earlier, the Prime Minister had told parliament that all coronavirus restrictions in England were to end on 24 February. People who tested positive for Covid would no longer be required by law to self-isolate, but would still be advised to stay at home. The £500 isolation payment for people on low incomes

Wednesday

James Forsyth

Why we shouldn’t ban Russia Today

Nadine Dorries, the Culture Secretary, has written to Ofcom urging it to keep the situation with Russia Today ‘very carefully under review’ given events in Ukraine. At PMQs, Keir Starmer called for the government to ask Ofcom to review RT’s license.  But if RT lost its broadcast license in the UK, then Putin would use this as an excuse to kick out the BBC and other British broadcasters. Just look at how Russia closed the Moscow office of Deutsche Welle, the German public service broadcaster, and ended the accreditation of its journalists after a German-language version of RT was taken off air in Germany. The least-worst option would be for

Mark Galeotti Mark Galeotti

Has Putin outplayed Macron in Africa?

While the world is focused on Ukraine, Emmanuel Macron has withdrawn all French forces from Mali. Last weekend, thousands of soldiers were flown out of the former French colony after nine years of fighting Islamist insurgents in the Sahel. Malian protesters bid the French soldiers farewell by shouting ‘Shit to France’ at the departing planes. Following a military coup in May, Mali’s ‘interim President’ Colonel Assimi Goïta began to tire of the French and their calls for free elections. There were also lingering doubts over France’s motivation, stoked by a Russian disinformation campaign. So Goïta began looking for allies who could provide him with muscle to fight the Islamist insurgency

Julius Strauss

Putin’s next move

Budapest Russian troops, many apparently without insignia, began advancing into the disputed Donbas region yesterday. The question now is how much further they will go. The Donbas rebels claim an area three times the size of the territory they currently hold, which is roughly equivalent to the area of Devon. If Moscow were to try to take control of the larger territory, it would mean overrunning the Ukrainian frontlines. It is unlikely that Kiev’s military can mount a serious defence if the Kremlin orders a full-scale attack. The call to advance came in the form of a belligerent speech by Putin to the Russian people. In it, he strongly suggested

Tuesday

Stephen Daisley

Putin must look at the West and laugh

Whatever the West’s response to Russia’s attack on Ukraine’s sovereignty, the crisis demonstrates the limitations of western politics and policy across the board. If Vladimir Putin understands any demographic better than the Russian people, it is the governing class of the West: that Harvard-Oxbridge-Sciences Po axis of toweringly smug and practically interchangeable global-liberals who weep for international norms they weren’t prepared to defend. Their ideas and their sanctions are tired because they are civilisationally tired. Putin knows this, but none of the rival ideologies aiming to replace liberalism have anything better to offer. The failure of the global-liberals comes on many fronts but two of the most significant have been

Jonathan Miller Jonathan Miller

Macron’s diplomatic failure in Russia was still a political success

President Emmanuel Macron may or may not have imagined that his mission to Moscow would head off armed conflict in Ukraine. He will nevertheless have calculated that while his mission was an abject diplomatic failure, it was a modest political success. The French pro-Macron media (most of it) bigged up the visit as a triumph of French diplomacy and an affirmation of Macron’s global stature. Plus, all the jetting back and forth gave the President an excuse to further delay announcing his candidacy for the presidential election, the first round of which is in just 47 days. He might have failed to stop Putin’s aggression, but at least he was

Seb Kennedy

Are the lights about to go out across Europe?

Today’s snap decision by German Chancellor Olaf Scholz to halt Nord Stream 2 — the new pipeline intended to export vast amounts of Russian gas into the EU — will make precisely no difference to European energy security, at least in the short to medium term. It could force a rethink of Berlin’s longer-term energy strategy, but the bigger question facing energy markets is whether Russia will curtail existing gas flows into Europe. Scholz on Tuesday instructed Germany’s Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Action not to allow the Baltic Sea pipeline to start pumping gas ‘for now’. Halting the certification process puts the project on hold but doesn’t

Steerpike Steerpike

Five of the worst responses to the Ukraine crisis

Boris Johnson has just got up in the Commons to announce Britain’s response to the ongoing Ukraine crisis. Vladimir Putin last night ordered troops into two breakaway regions of eastern Ukraine run by Moscow-backed separatists, prompting fears that the balloon is about to go up. There are a lot of grim faces in Parliament today as MPs meet to ponder the future of the region. Gulp. Johnson told the House that he was announcing sanctions against five Russian banks – Rossiya, IS Bank, General Bank, Promsvyazbank and the Black Sea Bank – and three Russian high net-worth individuals. While many across Parliament want the PM to go further, it’s by no means

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Britain’s Russia sanctions are underwhelming

The sanctions that Boris Johnson has just announced in response to Russia’s breach of international law are fairly underwhelming. Five banks are being hit, three rich individuals and those members of the Duma who voted to unilaterally recognise the breakaway republics. They will not make Moscow take notice in the way that the decision end certification of Nord Stream 2 has. Johnson’s defence of the limited nature of these sanctions is that they are the ‘first tranche’ and the UK needs to hold things back to try and deter Russia from further action. But given that the UK, rightly, considers what Russia is up to an invasion of Ukraine, these

Ross Clark Ross Clark

It’s too late to break Europe’s gas reliance on Russia

So, Nord Stream 2 will not be plugged into Germany’s gas grid. A little surprisingly, Chancellor Olaf Scholz has been first out of the blocks this morning in the western economic response to Putin’s recognition of breakaway states in eastern Ukraine. The block is not total: what Scholz says is that the certification process for the pipeline will be halted — leaving open the possibility that it might, after all, be connected if Putin starts to behave himself, or Germany becomes especially desperate for gas. Nevertheless, it is a significant move which will have an economic impact on Russia. But it is astonishing that the project was ever allowed to come

Wolfgang Münchau Wolfgang Münchau

Sanctions won’t stop Putin

The Lithuanian prime minister, Ingrida Šimonyte, put it well yesterday: ‘the way we respond will define us for the generations to come’. The invasion of Ukraine started last night with Vladimir Putin’s order to send troops into eastern Ukraine. He had earlier recognised the breakaway provinces of Donetsk and Luhansk, which together constitute the Donbas region, as independent republics. The two self-proclaimed states declared their independence — something neither Kiev nor any other third country save Russia has yet recognised — following 2014 following the Maidan revolution. The US, UK and EU say they will announce fresh sanctions as early as today. What we know is that the technicalities have been

Monday

Paul Wood

Will Putin now roll on to Kiev?

The White House told us with absolute certainty that there would be an invasion of Ukraine this week — instead Vladimir Putin bit off a chunk of Ukraine without firing a shot. Perhaps it seemed to him that recognising the two breakaway territories of Luhansk and Donetsk was a clever move: he had not, after all, ignored the warning that — in Boris Johnson’s phrase — one Russian soldier putting a toe-cap over the border would make sanctions inevitable. But sanctions will come anyway — the issue is only about how severe they will be — imposed because, as Johnson says, there has been a clear breach of international law.

James Forsyth James Forsyth

The seismic importance of Putin’s latest move

Vladimir Putin has tonight unilaterally recognised the two breakaway republics in Ukraine. In doing so, he has effectively ended the Minsk peace process. The move also begs the question of whether Putin is recognising the territory that these so-called republics actually hold, or the much larger territory that they claim. If the latter, then that raises the question of whether Russian troops will be used to take that land given that Putin immediately signed ‘friendship and mutual assistance’ treaties with them at the end of his speech this afternoon. The speech, though, went even further than recognising the break-away republics, carving off another chunk off Ukraine after the annexation of

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Is a Russian invasion now imminent?

Tensions on the Ukraine border are continuing to increase. Worryingly, Russian state media has gone from mocking Washington’s warnings of an invasion to ramping up the various pretexts that the Kremlin is trying to create for one. The leaders of the two self-proclaimed breakaway republics in the Donbas have been on Russian TV today asking for Russia to recognise them and offer military assistance. Moscow is also claiming that it has killed five Ukraine troops who supposedly crossed into its territory.  The Biden administration remains convinced that an attack on Ukraine is coming in the near future. Jake Sullivan, Biden’s national security adviser, warned this morning that ‘Every indication we

Wolfgang Münchau Wolfgang Münchau

How the Ukraine crisis ends

Vladimir Putin does not think in the way the West does. Of course sanctions will hurt. But so what? He may be wrong in his strategic calculations, but he is not, as Boris Johnson claimed over the weekend, irrational. Putin is an old-school strategist. This is one of the reasons that sanctions will not have the desired impact. An import ban on Russian gas would definitely hurt the Russian economy, but that seems highly unlikely. Italian President Mario Draghi said on Friday that we should not touch gas. It is now the guy who sits in Moscow, rather than Draghi, who is willing to do ‘whatever it takes’. An import

Sunday

Matthew Taylor

Sunday shows round-up: Ukraine could see ‘biggest war in Europe since 1945’

The Prime Minister has been attending the annual Munich Security Conference, where the prospective Russian invasion of Ukraine is very much at the top of the agenda. The BBC’s Sophie Raworth caught up with Boris Johnson yesterday, following a speech he made warning of the disaster that war would bring. Johnson said in the interview that he believed that Vladimir Putin was ready to orchestrate such a crisis at any moment: ‘It is important that people should feel confident again’ Tomorrow, the government is expected to announce its plans to remove all Covid restrictions for England. Raworth asked if this would erode the government’s ability to act decisively if complications

Thursday

Rod Liddle

We blew our chance to befriend Putin

You have the advantage over me. It may be that you are reading this now in your makeshift fallout shelter, hair falling out and bleeding from the gums as the nuclear winter descends. More likely you are saying, rather smugly, to your neighbour: ‘I knew he was taking the piss. He’s a right one, that Putin.’ Or perhaps Vlad’s forces are already in London, having swept through western Europe in about eight hours, the Germans for once outdoing the French with their alacrity to surrender. Well, that should see an end to Stonewall and the Tavistock Clinic, no? Every cloud, etc. I would not wish to underestimate the threat posed

Matthew Parris Matthew Parris

Taking Ukraine would finish Putin

‘Never interrupt your enemy,’ said Napoleon, ‘when he is making a mistake.’ A Russian invasion and occupation of Ukraine would prove (perhaps, by the time this Spectator is published, ‘will’ prove) a terrible mistake. Were it not for the death and despoliation such a mistake would bring — an outcome one could never welcome — the response to Vladimir Putin’s implicit threats should surely be: bring it on! When we told Russia they’d only be hurting themselves, did we not mean it? For the free world, an invasion would be a dark cloud; but, though I hate to speak of silver linings, the ultimate downfall of Putin, the severing of

Paul Wood

Russian roulette: is Moscow’s bluff backfiring?

A bluff only works if you can carry it off convincingly. The massing of some 130,000 Russian soldiers on Ukraine’s borders has led to London and Washington declaring that a full-scale invasion is imminent, but it could still be a feint. The Russians know everything they do can be seen by satellite. On the phone from Kiev, Colonel General Ihor Smeshko says he is not inclined to read too much into the Russian army’s logistics. He was head of Ukraine’s domestic intelligence service and later a candidate for president. ‘From the military point of view, Russian Federation has prepared everything needed to start the war,’ he said, but he still