World

Monday

Sam Leith Sam Leith

Remember the Russians who will really suffer from sanctions

When I was in Russia in the very early 1990s, there was a generic figure who seemed to stand at the entrance to every metro station: an ancient babushka in a headscarf and tatty coat, face creased with age and weather, holding out a flimsy plastic bag rolled into a little triangle, begging for kopeks. The collapse of communism had its winners and its losers – and these old women were the losers. The ‘social umbrella’ of the necrotic Soviet system may have provided its pensioners with a miserable existence, as a local explained it to me, but it had provided; and these women, having discovered that freedom is all

Sunday

Paul Wood

‘Help us, before it’s too late’

Western Ukraine Outside a military recruiting centre in Lviv, Egor Grushin, one of Ukraine’s most famous classical pianists, was waiting in line to join up. He was tall and slim with a wispy beard, long delicate fingers and large brown eyes that gazed into the middle distance. In other words, he was – as he would admit – no one’s idea of a soldier. He knew he would not be accepted into a frontline unit because, as he explained, so many people were volunteering that there weren’t enough guns to go round: only those with military experience could join the regular army. Instead, he would be part of Lviv’s civil

William Nattrass William Nattrass

Hungary’s ‘patriotic fight’ with the EU: an interview with justice minister Judit Varga

Budapest is racked with tension. As Russia’s invasion of Ukraine sends a stream of refugees to Hungary’s eastern border, Viktor Orbán’s Fidesz party has scrambled to respond to the humanitarian crisis while turning his back on his previous pragmatic relationship with Moscow. Fidesz’s unequivocal condemnation of Vladimir Putin’s actions will have come as a relief to Brussels. But a bitter argument still rages over Hungary’s opposition to the bloc’s new ‘rule of law’ budget mechanism, which allows EU funds to be made dependent on adherence to legal and democratic norms. When the European Court of Justice rejected a challenge to the mechanism from Hungary and Poland on February 16, Hungary’s

Patrick West

A cultural boycott of Russia plays into Putin’s hands

Has the cultural boycott of Russia gone too far? Events at an Italian university this week, where writer Paolo Nori claimed that a course on Dostoevsky was suspended following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, suggests so.  ‘Dear professor, the vice rector for didactics has informed me of a decision taken…to postpone the course on Dostoevsky,’ an email said, according to Nori’s video. ‘This is to avoid any controversy, especially internally, during a time of strong tensions.’ The college later backtracked, allowing Nori – author of ‘It still bleeds. The Incredible Life of Foyodor Dostoevsky’ – to continue teaching about the Russian author at the Bicocca University of Milan. But Nori was understandably upset. ‘I realise

Ian Williams Ian Williams

Xi Jinping and the plight of Chinese nationals in Ukraine

The plight of desperate Chinese nationals in Ukraine has further battered Xi Jinping’s credibility, testing his continued refusal to condemn the barbarity of his ‘best friend’ Vladimir Putin. There have been unconfirmed reports that four Chinese students were among 13 killed when a Russian rocket hit a dormitory of Kharkiv’s Academy of Culture. Students took to social media to plead for help when none came from the Chinese embassy in Kyiv. ‘The embassy never comes, no plane comes. We can only save ourselves. They abandoned us,’ said one post on Weibo, a Twitter-like platform. A video post claimed students were being shot at indiscriminately by Russian soldiers. Another appeal came

Saturday

Paul Wood

Meet the 74-year-old British major taking on the Russians in Ukraine

Some citizens of Nato countries are in Ukraine to fight. They are members of the new International Brigade the Ukrainians are recruiting at their embassies. The senior official told me that so far around 3,000 foreigners had signed up. A unit 500-strong had already been formed inside Ukraine, he said, ‘ready to go – except there are no weapons’. I thought these numbers might have been propaganda but it appears that the figures are roughly accurate – and more recruits are arriving all the time. There are apparently a number of British volunteers so far. I managed to speak to one of them, a retired major named Ian Cunningham. At

Mary Dejevsky

Are we cheering on Ukraine to destruction?

We’re just ten days into Russia’s assault on Ukraine and the western world has painted itself in Ukraine’s colours. Cities and towns have hung out Ukrainian flags and lit their public buildings in blue and gold. The BBC has changed the pronunciation of the Ukrainian capital from Kiev to Kyiv. Tesco is driving the supermarkets’ charge to rename chicken Kiev. And leading the cheers for Ukraine’s heroes have been the legislatures, from London to Brussels to Washington DC. MEPs watched a video message from Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, in respectful silence before erupting in applause and tears. The US Congress gave the blue-and-gold clad Ukrainian ambassador a prolonged standing ovation

Nicholas Farrell

Do Russians support Putin’s war?

Everyone is calling the conflict in Ukraine Putin’s war and insisting that it has nothing to do with the Russians themselves. The nightmare would end – they tell us – if only Vladimir Putin were to disappear in a coup. They used to say the same thing not only about Adolf Hitler but also Benito Mussolini. Yet both the Fuhrer and the Duce would have been as powerless as the speakers at Hyde Park Corner if they had not enjoyed the willing consent of a critical mass of Germans and Italians. Meanwhile devout Catholics like my Italian wife recite Psalm 109 – the one used to curse the outstandingly evil

Freddy Gray Freddy Gray

The myopic focus on racism at the Polish-Ukrainian border

There are already a hell of a lot of foreign correspondents and human-rights workers at the Ukrainian-Polish border – an immigration problem all by themselves, perhaps. Quite a few of these reporters seem to be desperately seeking ‘racism’ stories, since that is increasingly the only news which the English-speaking media seems able to process. The heart-warming scenes of Ukrainian women and children being given shelter isn’t the story. Because those refugees are white. At the border at Medyka on Thursday the Poles put out barbecued sausages, fruit juice and water for the incoming women and children. There were boxes of toys to cheer the traumatised little ones. At the train

Oliver Bullough

The downfall of Russia’s oligarchs

The normal justification for sanctioning oligarchs is that doing so will cost them money, causing them to put pressure on Vladimir Putin so he stops killing Ukrainians. But this rests on the untested assumption that they are able to put pressure on him, and that is where the plan is currently falling down. Oligarchs are not what they used to be. Our idea of the Russian oligarch was born in the 1990s, when a tiny group of men emerged from the wreckage of the Soviet economy, using their nous to seize anything with real value. While the Russian government was left with all the costly bits of the communist state

Robert Tombs

Can Russia ever coexist with the West?

Seeing Vladimir Putin’s bloated face and listening to his increasingly unhinged rhetoric makes it tempting to assume that the current conflict in Ukraine is all about him. His actions and threats take Europe back not just to the 1930s, or even to the 1860s and Bismarck’s cold-blooded ‘cabinet wars’, but to the 1740s when Frederick the Great blatantly grabbed Silesia and set Europe ablaze. In attacking a peaceful sovereign country, Putin has regressed long before the United Nations Charter, and even before 1815, when the war-weary states that defeated Napoleon created a ‘Concert of Europe’ to keep the peace – with tsarist Russia one of the guarantors. Quite mild-mannered people

Friday

Nick Cohen Nick Cohen

Is Russia Today finished?

As the British authorities debate whether to ban the propaganda channel of a savage imperialist power, Russia Today is making a decent first of banning itself. Workers have been walking out for a week. The invasion was too much even for staffers who had spent years demeaning themselves by licking the boots of a dictatorship. Even if Sky and YouTube had not effectively closed the channel by pulling it from their platforms, RT would have faced extreme difficulty in continuing to broadcast from London, one ex-staffer told me. About half his former colleagues had quit, including large numbers of production staff the Russians needed to keep the channel on air. One had

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Rest in peace, Shane Warne

Headingly, July 22nd 1993 and the opening day of the fourth test that summer between England and Australia. This, as it happens, was my first time attending a test match. And although we – my father, brother and I – had travelled from Scotland to Leeds hoping to see England prevail against their oldest, greatest, rival, expectations were prudently low. Australia were, after all, already 2-0 ahead in the series and there was little sign England were capable – or even believed themselves capable – of hauling themselves back into contention. There was the excitement of seeing test cricket in person. And, secondly, and more importantly, there was the prospect of

Rodric Braithwaite

Putin will not survive a failed war in Ukraine

Vladimir Putin has had a very bad week. His army, allegedly refurbished after its poor performance in the war against Georgia in 2008, has failed to deliver the promised blitzkrieg. It has launched a brutal bombardment of Kharkhiv, Ukraine’s second largest city, full of Russian-speakers who were supposed to welcome Putin’s soldiers as liberators. Meanwhile, Ukraine’s capital Kiev, which Russians like to call ‘the mother of Russian cities’, looks as if it is about to suffer the same fate. The Ukrainians are fighting more fiercely than anyone had expected, perhaps even than they themselves. And they are winning the information war, out-hacking and out-twittering Putin’s people in the most ingenious ways.

Kate Andrews Kate Andrews

Bear market: Russia’s economy is in free fall

How quickly can a G20 economy collapse? That question has come to the fore this week, as the world has united in targeting Russia’s economy while Vladimir Putin continues his illegal invasion into Ukraine. So far, the rouble is down more than 30 per cent on where it was pre-crisis, at an all-time low against the dollar. Russia’s central bank has upped interest rates to 20 per cent to stop a currency collapse. Its stock market is still closed, and is expected to remain so until mid-next week at the earliest – a record shutdown in the country’s history. BP has walked away from its 20 per cent stake in

Ross Clark Ross Clark

Will the Russian Stock Exchange ever reopen?

It is one thing for western companies, funds, investment trusts and others to promise to divest from Russian assets. But what if the Russian authorities won’t let you? The Moscow stock market has failed to open for a fifth day running. Prior to its closure, it had already plummeted by a third after the invasion of Ukraine. Russian investments traded on external markets have continued to plummet during the closure: JP Morgan Russian Securities, an investment trust traded on the London Stock Exchange, plunged by another 15 per cent this morning to 101 pence – just one-eighth of what it was trading at last autumn. Is that a bargain? ‘Buy

Justin Bronk

The Russian army is failing – but not enough to lose the war

There have been three major surprises for military analysts since the Russian military invaded Ukraine. The first has been the extent of the difficulties faced by the Russian army in terms of logistics, coordination of forces, morale and mobility. The second has been the failure of the Russian air force to achieve air superiority over Ukrainian air defences, and to operate against Ukrainian ground forces at scale. The third has been the extraordinary unity and effectiveness of the Ukrainian resistance, which has significantly slowed the Russian advance in the north of Ukraine and inflicted major personnel and vehicle losses on Russian forces on all fronts. Unfortunately, none of these factors

Wolfgang Münchau Wolfgang Münchau

How Putin wins the war

There was a revealing comment yesterday from Robert Habeck, the German economics minister. It is a comment that inadvertently suggests how Vladimir Putin will end up winning the war. Habeck said Germany would not agree to an import ban of Russian gas, oil and coal, because this would endanger the social peace in Germany. It is not clear whether he spoke for himself or the government. But as of now, we have reached the limits of meaningful sanctions. Germany ended Nord Stream 2 unilaterally. Germany raised its defence budget to 2 per cent of GDP, plus extra investments, again unilaterally. Germany reluctantly agreed to what turned out to be very limited

Andrew Garfield

Did the move to the free market unleash Russia’s demons?

Back in 2009 on an unseasonably warm autumn evening in Moscow, I was walking to dinner with a banker friend, a former British army officer with whom I’d bonded over a shared interest in history. At the time, we were both advising a large Russian bank which had recently listed its stock in London, and were irritated beyond measure to see its share price tanking, despite a booming Russian economy and it having no exposure to the American sub-prime mortgage market. As we crossed Mayakovsky Square, I blurted out almost without thinking; ‘You know the last time we had a financial crisis like this one, it ended up in a

Thursday

Ross Clark Ross Clark

The problem with the UK’s Russian clamp down

I’m no apologist for oligarchs, whether they be from Russia or anywhere else. I have been writing for years about how dirty money was flooding into London’s property market, helping to price out ordinary people who just want a home. The government should have taken action decades ago to prevent kleptocrats from laundering their money through London property and their reputations through our libel courts. These matters could have been addressed quite easily by prohibiting property from being held in the name of overseas private companies and by reforming libel laws to stop the wealthy from threatening journalists and anyone else with eyewatering legal bills. What must it feel like to be