Ukraine

Tuesday

Steerpike

Why do Russian tennis stars need to condemn Putin?

Nigel Huddleston is Under-Secretary of State for Sport, Tourism, Heritage and Civil Society, hardly the biggest job in government. Yet he seems a little inebriated on what little authority he has – at least if his latest remarks to the Department for the Digital, Culture, Media and Sport committee are anything to go by. Huddleston has taken on board the mood of the moment. He appreciates that sport must make a stand against Vlad the Invader and the invasion of Ukraine, and which sensible person would disagree? But boycotting Russia from major competitions and clamping down on dodgy oligarch football owners isn’t sufficient, apparently. Huddleston wants more. He suggested to the

Gabriel Gavin Gabriel Gavin

Turkish drones are transforming the war in Ukraine

Istanbul, Turkey A cheer rings out in a secret command centre. On the screen, another Russian missile launcher has vanished in a cloud of shrapnel and smoke. Working miles behind the front line, a team of Ukrainian drone operators is trying to turn the tide of the war against the Kremlin’s forces. The most effective weapon in their arsenal is the Turkish-made Bayraktar TB2. Soaring 160 meters above the battlefield, it delivers death at the push of a button. So fearsome is its reputation that it has inspired a love song that has gone viral in Ukraine and even a video game. Lightweight and with a small profile, the Bayraktars

Annabel Denham

Can Britain afford to spend more on defence?

With rumours swirling that the Ministry of Defence will see its budget boosted in next week’s spring statement it’s hard not to wonder: was Donald Trump right? The former President repeatedly criticised Nato members in Europe for not contributing enough to support the alliance, relying instead on the US to shoulder the burden. And while the UK has met the Nato commitment to spend 2 per cent of its GDP on defence, we’ve seen a massive decrease in our defence budget over the last half century. As war returns to Europe, a consensus view has emerged – that the UK grew complacent when it came to security. We recoiled at

Joanna Rossiter Joanna Rossiter

How to offer a room to a refugee

Michael Gove has announced that members of the public will be able to offer rooms and accommodation to named refugees through a government portal – Homes for Ukraine – which was launched on Monday. Gove said that he was confident there would be no shortage of people coming forward, although he gave a somewhat roundabout answer as to whether he himself would be hosting a refugee. The British public, however, appear to be very open to becoming hosts, with one in three saying they would offer a room, according to a poll conducted by The Observer. When Gove launched the scheme in the House of Commons yesterday, Lisa Nandy was quick

Monday

Isabel Hardman

Gove is clearing up Patel’s mess

Michael Gove has a reputation as a minister for clearing up colleagues’ messes – often the secretary of state he has replaced in a department – in a polite but very conspicuous fashion. Today it was Home Secretary Priti Patel’s turn to see what it was like to get a visit from Gove and his dustpan and brush. As Levelling Up, Housing and Communities Secretary, Gove is responsible for one of the routes by which Ukrainian refugees can come to Britain, and he announced the details of the ‘Homes for Ukraine’ scheme in the Commons this afternoon. This has largely been passed to him because the Home Office is in such

Julian Jessop

What happens if Russia defaults?

Well down the list of things to worry about as the ghastly Ukrainian tragedy unfolds is the high probability that the Russian government will stop paying its international debts. But this risk should certainly be somewhere on that list – as the fallout from past defaults has shown. We have been here several times before. Moscow also defaulted on its debt in 1998, exacerbating a sell-off across all emerging markets. It led to the collapse of a huge US hedge fund, Long-Term Capital Management, which had to be bailed out to prevent a worldwide meltdown. This came too late to save many other investors from large losses. Ten years later, apparently

Steerpike Steerpike

Matt Hancock’s refugee embrace

Who should be on this year’s Honours’ List? For Mr Steerpike, the answer is clear: Matt Hancock, MBE, for services to comedy. In recent months the rule-breaking romantic has performed a series of eye-catching antics to try and aid his bid back to power.  There was the Capital Jingle Bell Ball where he rocked up with Gina looking like a metrosexual Bond villain. There was the Serpentine swimming sesh when he ended up in hot water and the excruciating podcast interview in which he spoke about casual sex. And then of course there was the HarperCollins incident where the American publishing house had to distance themselves from reports Hancock was planning a

Sunday

Mark Galeotti

The West needs to prepare for guerrilla war in Ukraine

Russia’s deputy foreign minister Sergei Ryabkov warned this week that convoys of weapons being sent to Ukraine would be considered legitimate military targets by Russia. It was a deliberately ambiguous and political statement more than anything else, but it is also a useful reminder of the need to think about the potential next phase in the war. It is still unclear whether the Russians will be able to recover from their unimpressive initial onslaught, but one way or another it seems likely that at least part of Ukraine will end up under Moscow’s control. It also seems pretty certain that Ukrainians behind the lines will not quietly submit, but instead

Robert Service

The fatal miscalculation that led to war in Ukraine

The war against Ukraine – or the ‘special military operation’ as it is compulsorily known in Moscow – has lasted over a fortnight. For weeks Putin maintained a bristling encampment of forces in western Russia, southern Belarus and Crimea. He hoped this would provoke the collapse of the ‘neo-Nazi’ Ukrainian government and its comedian-president. When this failed to occur, he invaded. Photographs show Putin sitting at the end of a long table keeping his distance from his leading associates, such as the booming-voiced foreign minister Sergei Lavrov and khaki-clad defence minister Sergei Shoigu. Gone are the days of Kremlin camaraderie: Putin now expects and gets the maximum display of deference

Saturday

Jeff Stein

Russia has been preparing for war with the US for decades

The lights were blinking off. As raucous pro- and anti-Trump crowds flooded into Washington for the presidential inauguration in January 2017, the DC police department’s citywide surveillance cameras stopped recording. Within seconds, 123 of its 178 surveillance cameras, including those monitoring the streets around the White House and the headquarters of multiple federal agencies, had been ‘accessed and compromised.’ The intelligence gap lasted for three days, from January 12 to 15. Coming on the heels of Russia’s covert intrusions into the 2016 campaign, officials at first feared Vladimir Putin—or other bad actors, from China, Iran or North Korea—had dramatically upped their game to create more chaos in American society and

Colin Freeman

The reality of being ‘under siege’ in Kyiv

Kyiv, Ukraine I’ve never commuted into a warzone by train before, but I can now recommend it. The express train to Kyiv from Lviv near Ukraine’s Polish border has several advantages over coming in by car. Firstly, it avoids a 14-hour motorway drive, where fuel is short and traffic jams are long. Plus, the online booking app still works far better than any in Britain. Despite the risk of Russians-on-the-line, the train has been kept running to help Ukrainians flee Kyiv for the Polish border. But it returns to Kyiv largely empty, save for a few Ukrainians on mercy dashes to pick up relatives. We trundle through the night, the

Justin Bronk

Putin’s dream of annexing Ukraine is over

As the Russian invasion of Ukraine enters its third week, it is becoming abundantly clear that the Kremlin’s maximalist geopolitical aims of regime change and a ‘greater Russia’ which includes Ukraine and Belarus are no longer achievable. The question now is how much damage will Russian forces inflict on Ukrainian cities and their brave defenders before Putin and his advisors lower their ceasefire conditions to terms that Ukraine’s leaders and population can accept. Ukraine is in a strategically stronger position than many in the West appreciate, but the war on the ground is still stacked in Moscow’s favour in the short term. The plan to decapitate the Ukrainian state at

Friday

Fraser Nelson

Boris Johnson rejects Europe’s open approach to Ukrainian refugees

One of the most extraordinary (and moving) videos to have emerged since the invasion of Ukraine shows scenes at Berlin Central Station where refugees are paired upon arrival with locals offering accommodation. An unprecedented crisis has been met with an unprecedented public response – some 350,000 beds have been offered in Germany now. Over a million in Poland. People’s generosity has risen to the challenge – without government getting in the way to slow things down. Could it happen here? We risk ending up doing more than any European country to arm the Ukrainians but less than any other to help refugees Michael Gove is set to launch a British

Gus Carter Gus Carter

Don’t make war in Ukraine about Putin’s mental health

There was a time when supposedly serious commentators on world affairs used to at least feign historical knowledge. They might quote Bismarck or Castlereagh. Now, international relations punditry, like almost everything else, has succumbed to the language of pop psychology. Vladimir Putin is ‘gaslighting’ the Russian people, we are told, motivated by his ‘hypermasculinity’. His invasion of Ukraine is, according to one commentator on Radio 4 this morning, ‘unforgivable abuse’. I thought abuse meant kicking a dog or being cruel to a partner. Now it means starting a war. It’s almost as though we’re unable to think of Putin as anything other than a nasty contestant on reality TV. Take

Andrew Tettenborn

Why is the EU attacking Poland and Hungary in a crisis?

With Russian bombs harassing Kiev and Kharkiv, the two unsung heroes of Europe have been Poland and Hungary. With very little notice, they have between them welcomed, fed and accommodated well over a million refugees from Ukraine. This they have done gladly and without complaint. Yesterday the European parliament passed a ponderous 2,500-word resolution devoted to Poland and Hungary. An appreciation, perhaps, or even a vote of thanks? Not exactly. It was actually a call for the EU to take steps as soon as possible to block payment of EU budget and Covid recovery funds to both countries, and criticising Brussels for not having started the process earlier. Why? The

Matthew Lynn

Putin’s neo-communism is doomed to fail

It is responsible for inequality. For financial instability. And probably for poverty, racism and global warming as well. We have heard a lot about neoliberalism over the last 20 years. But now Vladimir Putin’s Russia is going in completely the opposite direction. The world is about to witness an experiment in what can only be described as neo-communism. The twist is that, unlike its liberal counterpart, it will be a complete failure – and the best thing the West can do is wait for it to implode. A Big Mac is not going to be any better when it is grilled by the Russian government Over the last three weeks

Stephen Arnell

Refugees in film: a cinematic guide

The tragic ongoing events in Ukraine have highlighted the plight of refugees, with over 2m people (mainly women and children) fleeing the country since Russia invaded on 24 February 2022. Sadly, refugee crises have been occurring since the dawn of what may ironically be called ‘civilisation’, most notably the Biblical Exodus from Egypt and Caesar’s conquest of Gaul, which began when the Swiss Helvetii confederation, under pressure of Germanic tribes, sought to cross into Roman territory on their westward journey to safety. Movies concerning refugees range from the past (Exodus: Gods & Kings) to the dystopian future (Children of Men) and are international in scope, including the UK (Limbo), Bosnia and Herzegovina

Justin Doherty

Why taking cold showers could help Ukraine

I found myself in Berlin at the weekend gasping for breath in a cold shower, doing my bit for Ukraine. Berliners are a phlegmatic bunch but the arrival of a European war two hours from their doorstep is triggering memories of much darker periods of conflict and stirring not-so-dormant feelings of solidarity and direct action. Could cold showers be the answer? Last week the German government undid decades of foreign policy, announcing massive investment in German defence spending and sending anti-tank and air defence weapons to Ukraine. Chancellor Olaf Scholz called Putin’s invasion a Zeitenwende, a ‘watershed moment’ as he pledged €100 billion to upgrade German’s defence forces and committed

Thursday

Paul Wood

Chernobyl Two?

The electricity supply to the ruined nuclear plant at Chernobyl in Ukraine has been cut off. According to one knowledgeable source I spoke to, this is a serious problem as power is needed to pump water around spent nuclear fuel rods stored there. There is a back-up diesel generator, but it has just one day’s supply of fuel left and once that runs out, the temperature could start to climb. If the water evaporates, the zirconium metal ‘fuel assemblies’ could start to melt – with radioactive material released into the atmosphere. This would not be anywhere near as bad as the original Chernobyl disaster, in 1986, when a reactor had

Roger Kimball

Kamala invades Poland

You can tell that the Biden administration is getting serious. They have unleashed their ultimate weapon, cackle diplomacy. The warhead is nicknamed Harris, and it is now in Poland cackling away, endeavouring to assemble the high-level Pierogis before Russia flattens Kiev or Putin decides to go nuclear – and by ‘go nuclear’, alas, I mean ‘go nuclear’. Some observers say that sending Kamala Harris on this mission will give her a chance to ‘burnish’ her foreign policy credentials. Cynical folks – and I would include myself in that group – think it is just another emission of fog by America’s first certifiably senile administration. It is just another emission of fog