Vladimir putin

Friday

James Forsyth

To hurt Putin, go for oil and gas – not Swift

Both the British and the Americans have been explicit that it is the Europeans who are blocking Russia being cut from Swift. Removing Russia would be a sound step, but it is far less important than a western agreement not to buy Russian oil and gas would be. Sadly, though, there is little chance of this happening — too many countries are dependent on Russian gas — which means $700 million a day will continue to flow into Moscow, strengthening the Kremlin’s belief that it can ride out whatever sanctions are imposed on it. Depressing as this may be, there are things the UK can do using domestic law that would inflict pain

Thursday

James Forsyth

Boris Johnson needs even tougher sanctions to deter Putin

Boris Johnson has just outlined a series of further sanctions on Russia. They are considerably more substantial than the ones he announced earlier this week. They exclude Russian banks from the UK financial system, bar Russian firms from raising capital in London and will see the UK join the US’s technology sanctions on Russia. However, Russia will not be cut off from the Swift payments system — it is clear that the UK has, sadly, lost the argument on that for now. This does raise the question of what, if not the unprovoked invasion of a sovereign country, would be enough to lead to Russia being cut off from Swift. In answers

Boris Johnson

Read: The Prime Minister’s address to the nation as Russia invades Ukraine

Shortly after 4 o’clock this morning I spoke to President Zelensky of Ukraine to offer the continued support of the UK, because our worst fears have now come true and all our warnings have proved tragically accurate President Putin of Russia has unleashed war in our European continent. He has attacked a friendly country without any provocation and without any credible excuse. Innumerable missiles and bombs have been raining down on an entirely innocent population. A vast invasion is underway — by land, by sea, and by air. And this is not, in the infamous phrase, some faraway country of which we know little. We have Ukrainian friends in this country; neighbours, co-workers. Ukraine is

Katy Balls Katy Balls

Boris Johnson promises more sanctions

Following Vladimir Putin’s decision to launch a full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Boris Johnson has addressed the nation. Speaking from 10 Downing Street, the Prime Minister spoke of his regret that ‘our worst fears have now come true’ and Russia had ‘unleashed war in our European continent’. Johnson said he had spoken with the Ukrainian president to reiterate the UK’s ongoing support. A vast invasion is underway — by land, by sea, and by air. And this is not, in the infamous phrase, some faraway country of which we know little. We have Ukrainian friends in this country; neighbours, co-workers: Ukraine is a country that for decades has enjoyed freedom and democracy and the right

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Two reasons Putin thinks he can weather sanctions

The nature of the Russian attack on Ukraine, striking across the country and not just concentrating on the territory claimed by the so-called breakaway republics, shows Vladimir Putin’s confidence that he can weather whatever sanctions the West imposes. This is not an assault designed to sit in any kind of grey area, but an unambiguous invasion — which the West has always made clear would bring forth the maximum set of sanctions. This is not an assault designed to sit in any kind of grey area Putin’s confidence is driven by two things. First, as I say in the magazine this week, Russia has been preparing to face expanded sanctions since

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

Freddy Gray Freddy Gray

Would Trump have prevented the crisis in Ukraine?

‘I know Vladimir Putin very well,’ said Donald Trump yesterday, speaking of the Ukraine crisis, ‘he would have never done during the Trump administration what he is doing now.’ As with a lot of Trump utterances, that statement is at once arrogant, preposterous — and probably true. Maybe it is a coincidence — or Trump’s often-cited luck — that the last major crisis over Ukraine was back in 2014, after Viktor Yanukovych was ousted and Putin annexed Crimea. Or perhaps not. Putin, as a slightly comic alpha male authoritarian, saw in Trump something he recognised Back then Barack Obama led the free world and, busy as he was, he offloaded

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

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

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

Wednesday

Owen Matthews

How western journalists became Putin propagandists

Why does Vladimir Putin need Russia Today and Sputnik News when the western media are doing such a great job on his behalf? Throughout his two decades in power, Putin has yearned for international respect. Failing that, he’ll settle for fear. And what more satisfying outcome could there be for a serial sabre-rattler like Putin to have his bluff finally taken seriously? For weeks, British papers and TV have been filled with images of scary Russian tanks, warships and artillery blasting away — mostly provided, if you check the photo credits, by Russia’s Ministry of Defence. Since November, the US and British governments have been issuing increasingly strident warnings that

Charles Moore Charles Moore

What would Thatcher have said about Putin?

When Sir Tony Brenton writes a letter to the Times, as he frequently does, it always says at the bottom that he was British ambassador to Moscow. The uninformed reader could be forgiven for thinking the sub-editors have got it back to front and he was actually the Russian ambassador to London. Sir Tony’s message in every letter is ‘It’s all Britain’s fault’. In his latest, his particular target was the Foreign Secretary, Liz Truss, after her visit to Moscow. He said she ‘might usefully recall Margaret Thatcher’s wise message to Mikhail Gorbachev sent in 1985 as perestroika began to take off: “We know that you have as much right to

Thursday

Thomas Lorman

Viktor Orbán or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Putin

Viktor Orbán first came to prominence when in 1989 he declared on live TV that Hungary must put an end to the ‘Russian occupation’. On the first day of February this year, he held his thirteenth meeting with Vladimir Putin. What’s changed? Like much of his generation, Orbán initially believed that the fall of communism would mean a ‘return to Europe’ — with not only western democracy but also a western standard of living. Yet after a brief and unpleasant stint studying in Oxford, the student politician discovered that Britain’s future elites were ignorant and decadent. Orbán eventually concluded that Hungary had to jettison its naïve faith in Western Europe

Tuesday

Francis Pike

Was the Kazakhstan uprising an attempted Jihadi takeover?

The Kazakh uprising is over. The stench of burnt-out vehicles and bombed out buildings in Kazakhstan’s most populous city and former capital, Almaty, has begun to dissipate. Life is returning to normal. Banks have reopened. Salaries and pensions are being paid. The internet is up and running again. Almaty airport is expected to reopen today. As the fog of war lifts some clarity about these events is beginning to emerge. Officials have reported that 100 businesses and banks were destroyed along with 400 vehicles. Seven policemen died and hundreds more were wounded; 8,000 people have been arrested. Some 164 civilians were killed. The government of President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev has survived

Thursday

Rodric Braithwaite

Glasnost merely confirmed Russia’s deep-seated suspicion of democracy

Thirty years ago the Soviet Union was guttering to its close. Those of us who were there remember the exhilarating hope, the apprehension, the illusion. For everyone else it is a distant echo. Russia was always likely to lose the Cold War competition with America. It was unmanageably large, too poor and too reliant on too few products. Stalin’s bloody grip had enabled the Soviet Union to defeat the Germans at a terrible cost to his people. When he died in 1953 his system entered a protracted agony. Over the next decade Nikita Khrushchev tinkered with half-baked solutions. They misfired, and he was overthrown by the hard men in the

Tuesday

David Patrikarakos

Is Russia preparing to invade Ukraine?

I can still hear the battlefields of eastern Ukraine. Just a mile or so from us, thousands of Russian troops were dug in; shells landed nearby. It was so cold my phone kept switching off. Seven years later, Ukraine is heading into another sub-zero winter. And the Russian troops have returned. Moscow has now massed more than 90,000 troops on Ukraine’s eastern border. Washington is briefing that intelligence suggests an invasion. Moscow says this is ‘alarmist’ and — as usual — accuses Nato of inflaming things. How did we get here? In truth the conflict never ended, it just froze. But it’s also true that the relationship between Kiev and Moscow

Wednesday

Mark Galeotti

There is no Russia-China axis

You should be careful what you wish for, because you might just get it, so the old cliché goes. In diplomacy at the moment, it seems you should be careful of the threats you prepare for, because you may end up producing them. There is a growing trend in the West towards treating Russia and China as some single, threatening ‘Dragonbear’ (a reference to the two countries’ national animals). This underrates the very real tensions between Moscow and Beijing, but risks pushing them even closer together. The most recent case in point was Nato secretary-general Jens Stoltenberg’s interview in the Financial Times, in which he criticised ‘this whole idea that we

Monday

Owen Matthews

The mystery of Vladimir Putin’s mistresses

There’s an odd thing about 18-year old Luiza Rozova’s instagram feed. You can see photos of her breakfasts (sliced exotic fruit on heart shaped plates); her bikini selfies and her smart Paris apartment; her new shoes and her trips to the Louvre (heavily masked). But you never see her face. Take a look at screen-grabs of her insta feed before it was purged of all recognisable images and you realise why. Luiza – born Elizaveta Vladimirovna Krivonogykh – bears a striking resemblance to Vladimir Putin. It’s the same story with her mother, Svetlana Krivonogykh. The blonde 46-year-old’s social media pages were once full of photos of Svetlana in a helicopter