World

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

Robert Peston

Expelling Russia from Swift would be a massive economic shock

If Russia is expelled from the Swift banking messaging system, that would be serious economic warfare against Putin. Because Thursday’s decision by the US Treasury to make it almost impossible for Russia’s two biggest banks, VTB and Sperbank, to do any business with US institutions or use US infrastructure to process dollar payments will potentially disrupt tens of billions of dollars of Russian financial transactions every day, much of it related to its huge oil and gas industry. This combined prohibition on international transfers by Russian banks and the US embargo on dollar clearing for them would in theory generate a massive negative economic shock for Russia, that would rapidly

The war in Ukraine is not about you

In times of war and strife it’s only natural to feel anxious and worried. It’s a normal, primal reaction. What’s not normal, however, is to conspicuously advertise that fact, and to use a calamity to let the world know what a deeply concerned and conspicuously compassionate person you are. Not for the first time in living memory a serious global issue has been reduced to the self, refracted through the prism of me. This week the war in Ukraine has provided a pretext for celebrities, social media users and newspaper columnists to talk about how they feel and how scared they are. Such narcissistic behaviour has long been normalised in

‘This is our land. This is our history’: my appeal to the people of Russia

I come today with an appeal to all citizens of Russia. Not as President. I am appealing to the people of Russia as a citizen of Ukraine. We share more than 2,000km of border. Around it, today, is your army: almost 200,000 soldiers; thousands of military units. Your leadership has approved their movement towards us. Towards the territory of another country. This step can become the start of a huge war on the European continent. The whole world is talking about what can happen any day now. A reason can appear at any moment. Any provocation. Any spark. A spark that has the potential of burning everything down. You are

Ian Williams

China is tying itself in knots over Ukraine

A few hours after Vladimir Putin sent his tanks into Ukraine, Beijing announced that Russian wheat, previously barred because of fungal contamination, was now disease-free and large scale imports to China would begin. It was a first tangible sign of Xi Jinping’s willingness to cushion the blow of western sanctions on the Russian economy, and in effect underwrite Putin’s Ukrainian aggression. Russia is one of the world’s biggest wheat producers, and trade is highly vulnerable to western restrictions. China’s wheat lifeline followed the signing last month of a 30-year contract for Russia to supply natural gas to China’s north east and a commitment to far greater energy cooperation. Significantly, the gas

It’s time for Germany to stand up to Russia

In his novel The Loyal Subject, which appeared on the eve of the first world war, Heinrich Mann, the brother of Thomas, satirised Wilhelmine Germany as a hotbed of chauvinistic nationalism. The servile nationalism that Mann mocked could not be further from the ethos of the Federal Republic of Germany today. So pervasive is Germany’s eirenic disposition that on Thursday, as Russian president Vladimir Putin ravaged Ukraine, Lieutenant General Alfons Mais, the head of the German army, took the unusual step of turning to LinkedIn to ventilate his exasperation at the impotence of his own fighting forces. ‘In my 41st year of peace-time service, I would not have thought that

David Patrikarakos

Ukrainians are living through a hell on earth

‘Live long enough and you watch everyone go mad,’ the man said to me gloomily. It was around 2009, and I was listening to a former senior civil servant tell me what he had learned from a life spent in diplomacy. I’m not sure even he envisioned seeing proper madness in a world leader until Putin’s televised hour-long pantomime earlier this week. Putin over those 60 minutes was a man marinating in rage and possessed of a worldview built on paranoia and ego. The performance culminated in him recognising the ‘republics’ of Donetsk and Luhansk in eastern Ukraine. The moment he did this he smashed the Minsk peace process designed

Rod Liddle

Will Holly Willoughby stop the war in Ukraine?

I assume that Vladimir Putin will now rapidly withdraw his forces from Ukraine given the recent interventions of Holly Willoughby, Peter Andre and – perhaps most tellingly of all – Kerry Katona.  Still more pressure has been brought to bear on the beleaguered President as Sean Penn has arrived in Ukraine to film a no-doubt searing documentary.  Meanwhile in the UK thousands of ordinary people have made it absolutely clear, by adopting the Ukrainian flag on their social media sites and also putting out tea lights, that Putin must mend his ways. What would you do if you were Putin? Resign right now? Or simply sue for peace, apologising as

Putin’s invasion has exposed the frailty of Europe’s armies

Putin’s forces are currently steamrolling Ukraine’s defences, with Russian troops circling the capital and invading from the south and east of the country. Meanwhile European leaders, neutered by their military weakness, have been unable to do little more than offer pointless sanctions and statements of solidarity. As Russian troops streamed across the border, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen condemned the ‘unprecedented military aggression.’ When the Kremlin moved to recognise the Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts as independent states, the response in Brussels was to pass a fresh package of sanctions. This was repeated in London, with Boris Johnson telling our ‘Ukrainian friends’ that ‘we are with you and we

Are Russians turning against Putin?

One of the reasons why I judged — wrongly — that Vladimir Putin would not order an all-out invasion of Ukraine was the likelihood of a protracted war. But another was the possibility of popular protest in Russia, which could have potentially destabilising effects on the Kremlin. After sporadic protests in the hours immediately after the invasion, all of them ending in arrests or dispersal by police — citing Covid restrictions — Thursday evening sprang a surprise. Young people came out in their hundreds with homemade placards saying ‘nyet voine’, no to war, not just in Moscow and St Petersburg, where political engagement tends to be higher, but in nearly 50 towns

Jonathan Miller

Macron’s posturing as a global statesman will get him re-elected

It is bordering on tasteless amidst the horror of war in Europe to question the political impact of the conflict on the first round of the French presidential election in 44 days. But it’s naïve to imagine that such thoughts are not occurring to the politicians themselves, not least Emmanuel Macron. As I write this on Friday, Macron has still to declare his candidacy for the presidency. He’s been letting his opponents on the right and left fight it out amongst themselves for as long as possible. He could declare tomorrow at the Salon d’Agriculture, where he is scheduled to make the customary presidential appearance. Or maybe not. Macron has

Brendan O’Neill

Tom Tugendhat and the worrying rise of Russophobia

Public life in Britain has taken a dark turn over the past 48 hours. Russia’s outrageous invasion of Ukraine has caused some people to lose their minds. War hysteria is everywhere. Jingoism is surging. Russophobia itself threatens to take hold in polite society. I can’t be the only person who feels deeply uncomfortable with the stifling, conformist and accusatory atmosphere that has descended on these isles in such swift order. Truth is the first casualty of war, they say. In fact it’s more often freedom and reason. Especially freedom of conscience: the freedom to think differently to those banging the drums of war, or, in this case, those calling for

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

Ross Clark

Will the West shut Russia out of Swift?

You may never have heard of the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunications — or at least not by its full name. Even if you had you may have mistaken it for a fairly inconsequential trade body that holds rather dull conferences in hotel function rooms in places like Frankfurt.  Yet it finds itself at the centre of the West’s response against Vladimir Putin. Swift, as it is otherwise known, is the system by which banks communicate in order to undertake cross-border financial transactions. This morning the Ukrainian foreign minister pleaded with the West to cut off Russia from the system. Britain would like to do just that, as would some

Robert Peston

Will Ukraine become Putin’s Afghanistan?

Defence Secretary Ben Wallace may be right that Russian troops have not succeeded in all their immediate objectives, that they are demoralised and have been incompetent, and have suffered heavy losses. But the idea Putin is failing miserably – as Wallace claims – won’t be compelling to those who spent the night in Kiev’s metro stations to shelter from Russian missiles. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and his government colleagues, who warn that the first priority of Russia’s special forces is their removal from the face of the planet, are also unlikely to be persuaded. For all Western leaders’ words about imposing the ‘mother of all sanctions’ and not allowing the bully

Lisa Haseldine

A war ‘crime’: How the Russian press covered the invasion of Ukraine

What do Russians make of Putin’s invasion of Ukraine? The violence has been condemned around the world, and it seems that thousands of Russians who have taken to the streets on anti-war protests agree that Putin has gone too far. But some Russians continue to support their president, in spite of suggestions from abroad that he has ‘lost the plot’. The coverage in the Russian press of the first day of the invasion of Ukraine reflects the mixed feelings about the conflict. Here’s how Russian newspapers reacted to war in Ukraine: Izvestiya Izvestiya is one of Russia’s most widely-circulated broadsheet newspapers, with a focus on bringing business news to its readership. The paper’s stance

Katja Hoyer

Will Germany now become a serious military power again?

The Chief of the German Army is angry. Alfons Mais’s words were coloured by evident frustration when he said that the Bundeswehr had been ‘caught with its pants down’ in the current crisis in Ukraine:  ‘The options we can offer politicians to support the alliance are extremely limited’ Such outspoken political criticism is rare from high-ranking German military figures, which gave Mais’s rant even more resonance. He was particularly frustrated that he and others had raised concerns for years. ‘But our arguments to draw conclusions from the annexation of Crimea and put them into practice failed to cut through,’ he said. Mais admitted:  ‘That does not feel great! I am

Why Ukrainians fear the Russians

The Ukrainian word ‘Holodomor’ meaning ‘death by hunger’ is not as well known in the West as the word ‘Holocaust’, but it should be. In 1933, a decade before the Nazis began to deliberately murder some six million European Jews, Stalin’s Soviet regime starved to death – equally deliberately – some four million men, women and children in the Ukraine. That this epic crime has largely disappeared from public memory, mostly forgotten except by historians and the Ukrainian diaspora, is partly down to the second catastrophe that overwhelmed Ukraine in 1941-45 with its invasion and conquest by Hitler’s armies. This terrible episode was also successfully covered up and concealed from the