War in Ukraine is disastrous for the world’s air freight industry

As with Covid-19 it will take time for the full consequences of the Russian invasion of Ukraine to become apparent. But one unexpected impact is already becoming clear: that on air freight. Ukraine, it turns out, occupies a niche at the very heavy end of the industry. Ukrainian company Antonov manufactures the world’s largest transport planes in the shape of the An-225 – a six-engined behemoth built by the Soviets in 1985 and capable of a maximum take-off weight of 640 tonnes – and the slightly smaller An-124. By contrast, the freighter version of the Boeing 747-400 has a maximum take off weight of 450 tonnes. As a total share of the global air freight industry the planes do not register highly – only one An-225 was ever completed and there are only 24 An-124s in service. But for very heavy items the Antonov was often the only air freight option available.

But the only An-225 is believed to have been destroyed by an attack on Hostomel airport on Friday, and, as Ryan Petersen, CEO of logistics firm Flexport explained morning, the An-124s will soon be unable to fly because they rely on being serviced by Antonov in Ukraine. The planes are especially critical for the energy sector, for transporting items such as turbines and transformers.

It isn’t just Antonov. Thanks in part to their strategic position between Western Europe and South East Asia, Ukraine and Russia have been big players in the air freight business. Isolating the Russian economy could have a serious effect on the ease of transporting goods by air. However, Western planes could make up for lost capacity for all but the transport of very heavy items.

Thanks to Covid, there are a large number of recently-decommissioned Boeing 747s, some of which could be pressed back into service. Given the pain inflicted on airlines over the past couple of years, many will view with relish the prospect of picking up at least some business from Russian planes. The only trouble is that with Russian airspace increasingly closed to western aircraft, it is going to make freight journeys between Europe and East Asia longer and more expensive.

Putin’s propaganda machine is breaking down

As protests continue against the war in Ukraine, and as Russian casualties mount, the Kremlin has launched the predictable two-prong propaganda campaign. This is made up of a barrage of nonsensical rationalisations of Russia’s invasion and legal and technological measures to try and keep honest reporting at bay. Much like the soldiers engaged in the invasion, Putin’s propagandists are looking as committed or competent as might have been expected.

Although the state has a firm grip on TV and most other media outlets, this is not a totalitarianism and there are still some independent outlets. Hosts and ordinary citizens calling in to the Silver Rain radio station were barely holding back the tears as they talked about the war. Some regional outlets are already reporting casualties amongst local soldiers and National Guard.

Putin’s media control machine is also having to scramble to spin this unprovoked war. It appears he had not shared his plans with any but his security chiefs. Russia’s officials largely found out about this at the same time as the rest of us. Presumably intended to cut down on the risk of leaks – although Western intelligence was clearly on top of the story – it left the technocrats dismayed and caught flat-footed.

This means that although the broad contours of the cartoonish official line are clear – that a genocide against ethnic Russians was being carried out by a neo-Nazi Ukrainian regime under American control – propagandists are having trouble making sure they don’t overstep the mark.

Consider, for example, the work of Petr Akopov, who a week ago was writing for the state’s RIA Novosti news agency that ‘the West abandoned Ukraine’ because ‘the Anglo-Saxons have long ago overstrained themselves with their project of global domination.’ He knocked off a piece headlined ‘Russia’s Advance and the New World,’ clearly written in anticipation of a quick victory. Larded with vainglorious assertions such as that ‘Ukraine has returned to Russia,’ it presents the Kremlin’s ambitions as much more imperialist than Putin has openly admitted:

‘Russia is restoring its unity – the tragedy of 1991, this terrible catastrophe in our history, its unnatural dislocation, has been overcome. Yes, at a great cost, yes, through the tragic events of a virtual civil war, because now brothers, separated by belonging to the Russian and Ukrainian armies, are still shooting at each other, but there will be no more Ukraine as anti-Russia. Russia is restoring its historical fullness, gathering the Russian world, the Russian people together – in its entirety of Great Russians, Belarusians and Little Russians.’

In other words, the endgame is the unification of not just Ukraine but also Belarus in a single union under Moscow. This was presumably written to be run after that glorious victory had been won. However, RIA Novosti somehow jumped the gun and published this on Saturday. This mistake was quickly realised, but in the modern information age our edits and mistakes remain embedded in the geological layers of the internet. Following the link on the RIA Novosti website now tell you ‘there is no such page’ but, the original remains archived on the Wayback Machine. It also ended up reprinted in The Frontier Post, an English-language daily published in Pakistan. Oops.

But it’s harder to know what to make sense of the TASS news wire report from Sunday that, after dutifully reporting Putin’s order to bring nuclear forces to the next level of readiness, added that: ‘According to reliable sources from the Russian Federation Ministry of Defence, Putin is personally extremely disappointed with the progress of the military operation’. It then proceeded to list the tally of destroyed armour and casualties, including 146 tanks and 4,300 soldiers.

The article has since been scrubbed from the net more effectively than Akopov’s, but these tallies coincides with the figure announced by Ukraine’s deputy defence minister. Was this clumsy editing? A Ukrainian hack that added the damning butcher’s bill to an anodyne report? A deliberate act of sabotage by a journalist at TASS? 

As the information war hots up, too – and as Russians find clever ways to signal their own disapproval of the invasion – we are likely to see more and more grit in the workings of Putin’s propaganda machine.

Six clips of Ukrainian heroism

It’s four days since the invasion of Ukraine by Russia and there’s no sign of any surrender by those opposing Putin’s forces. By common consensus, the spirited fightback by both Ukrainian troops and their citizens has impressed and surprised many across Europe. 

It comes amid reports that the Kremlin has misjudged the extent to which Ukrainians are willing to fight and die for their country, as the west gears up to inflict massive financial sanctions on Russia. The revolution may not be televised but in 2022 conflict is being live-streamed on social media accounts. Below are six of the best examples of the ordinary men and women of Ukraine demonstrating resistance to the Putin invasion.

‘Sunflower seeds’

Perhaps the most viral incident thus far was a Ukrainian woman confronting armed Russian soldier and offering to ‘take these seeds so sunflowers grow here when you die.’ Calling the Russian invaders ‘occupants’ and ‘fascists’, the Ukrainian woman refused to be cowed by the soldier’s warning to ‘not escalate the situation’.

She replied: ‘How can it be further escalated? You fucking came here uninvited.’ The encounter took place in the port city of Henichesk along the Sea of Azov in the Kherson province of southern Ukraine. Sunflowers are of course Ukraine’s national flower.

There have been multiple cases of Ukrainians blocking the advance of Russian tanks. In this one a huge crowd of ordinary civilians mass along a road to block the path of a convoy in an example of reminiscent of Tiananmen Square’s ‘tank man’ blocking Chinese forces in 1989. This footage is said to have been filmed in Koryukivka, a town just miles from the border with Russia and shows dozens of locals walking calmly towards the armoured column.

One chain-smoking Ukrainian in Berdyansk spotted a mine on the road and didn’t wait around for a bomb disposal unit. At great risk to life and limb, he removed the mine, clearing the way for the Ukrainian military, all the while clutching his cigarette between his teeth.

A Ukrainian citizen confronted Russian soldiers after their armoured vehicle broke down on a country road in the Sumy region, close to the border with Russia. After spotting the hapless soldiers, the driver pulled alongside them, and asked: ‘Can I tow you back to Russia?’ The soldiers asked how Russia was doing in the war, the Ukrainian driver told them their country is losing and that they should go home.  Fifty tonne tank survivor

A Russian tank swerved to crush an unarmed civilian car in Kiev before reversing back over the vehicle and driver. The incident unfolded on the outskirts of Ukraine’s capital as Vladimir Putin’s forces put the city under siege, with the tank – which weighs between 44 to 67 tonnes – seen swerving to purposely crush the car, before rolling back over it. Remarkably, the elderly driver survived the ordeal and was later freed by passers-by, only suffering minor injuries. 

 ‘I’m going to fuck Russians up’

One Ukrainian man interrupted an Israeli broadcaster, telling them to stop talking and declaring ‘we need to help Ukraine’, before vowing to take up arms against the Russian invaders as he waved around a bollard. Cue instant social media stardom.

Has Putin resurrected the West?

I think Putin will have been surprised. I mean: I was surprised. Weren’t you? Not, necessarily, that Ukraine should have been resisting as valiantly as it is; nor even that Russia’s supposedly unstoppable war machine should have found itself out of petrol on a chilly highway from which the road signs have been removed. But surprised by the sheer force and volume and unanimity of the international cry of: no, this will not stand.

That is one thing, even amid the unspeakable human cost of the war in Ukraine, to feel encouraged by. If this invasion does, as many have said, mark the beginning of a new order in European security and great power politics, isn’t it a sign that it could be a stronger, better, less complacent one?

Putin, it seems, expected a short, decisive expeditionary war. He expected Ukraine to collapse, its leadership to be decapitated and a client regime installed. And he expected that — as when he nibbled at the Donbas and Crimea, as when he waged his bloody war in Chechnya, as when he had the gall to poison his enemies on UK soil — the western powers would tut and grumble and bitch but, eventually, throw up their hands and return to business as usual.

He will have seen the West as many have come to see it: soft, decadent, comfortable with its consumer luxuries and riven by the narcissism of small differences. He’ll have seen us bickering over regulatory regimes and fishing quotas, running down our armed forces, and substituting Lilliputian culture-wars tit-for-tat for substantial political argument. He’ll have thought, I guess, that the basic principles of liberal democracy aren’t anything anyone really gets ventilated about any more.

Well, up to a point — and he has discovered by ill-thought-out experiment where that point is. A kleptocratic dictatorship, with a frosting of pseudo-mystical blood-and-soil Slavic nationalism, has launched an unprovoked attack on a sovereign democratic state — and the democratic West found its backbone. Turns out that’s where the line is.

There’s a good case to say that it shouldn’t have got this far; that the West has muddled by and equivocated for too long, has been too keen to let money talk and might make right. There’s a case to say that the line shouldn’t have had to have been drawn here. But aren’t you heartened that, at least, the line exists? That when it comes down to it, we aren’t prepared to concede the rules-based international order with a cynical shrug? That we still think there are some things more important than cheap oil?

Short of committing Nato troops to Ukraine’s defence — on the grounds that Nato formally declaring war on a nuclear power might not end well — the unity of the western response has indicated that national sovereignty, self-determination and the rule of law aren’t just slogans.

It took a day or two for that seriousness to assert itself; a day or two, maybe, to really clock that this was the real thing. There was our hesitant first bite at sanctions, the havering over a Swift ban, and Germany’s initial reluctance to break its postwar moratorium on lethal aid; while hashtag warriors in the UK spent their energies using Ukraine’s abject tragedy to score points off each other about Jeremy Corbyn. But presently, first slowly and then quickly, we woke up. Russia came to see how far out on a limb it is. Isolation from the global financial system, most of Europe’s airspace closed to Russian planes, mass disinvestment from Russian companies, multilateral action against its organs of state propaganda, moves to strengthen Nato’s eastern flank and affirm the security of eastern European allies — and donated weapons flowing into Ukraine by the thousand from the US, Sweden, the UK and Germany.

Even those from whom Putin would have expected complicity have turned their backs on him. China abstains at the UN. The Kazakhs refuse to send support. Turkey and Hungary stand by Ukraine, the former apparently limbering up to close the Black Sea to his warships. Putin’s regime has placed itself outside the pale of civilisation. Even if he wins a military victory here — and there’s still every reason to fear that he will — it’s impossible to see how it will be anything other than a Pyrrhic one.

This isn’t just a matter of international policy. It’s there in the information war that Russia is so abjectly losing, in the countless gestures of solidarity with Ukraine across the free world, and in the concrete offers of help, from private donations for aid and military supplies to the people driving across Europe to the Polish border to give assistance to refugees.

And it’s there above all in the ordinary Ukrainians who are taking up arms in defence of their country. It’s there in the exuberant two-fingered salute that they’re giving to the sullen tyrant in the Kremlin even as they stand to lose everything: the “go f— yourselves” of the garrison on Snake Island; the taunting propaganda memes; the old woman urging a Russian conscript to put sunflower seeds in his pocket so they grow in Ukraine’s soil when he’s killed; the hackers rickrolling Russian forces radio with Ukrainian folk songs; the motorists mocking the crews of broken-down tanks; the farmers towing Russian APCs away behind their tractors.

It’s bravery such as we can only watch in awe. But it also looks like the shining moral clarity that comes from saying: this is something absolutely worth fighting for.

Putin, Ukraine and the end of ‘the end of history’

As Vladimir Putin ordered Russian troops onto Ukrainian soil, the initial Western response was swift, if not underwhelming. Trade in Russian debt was curbed and a handful of oligarchs have had their assets frozen. Snarky tweets from an American embassy safely withdrawn to Poland, were also sent. While Russia rolled its tanks across the border, European cities lit up buildings in Ukrainian colours. Perhaps predictably, the threat of these measures and the diplomatic disapproval accompanying them did not dissuade Putin from further action. Hard power, and the ability and will to deploy it, count. Putin has all three; the West does not.

The appeal of sanctions and diplomatic condemnation lies partly in that they are visible and relatively low cost; they offer the trappings of serious engagement in international affairs and the execution of authority without having to turn to harder measures. These are the qualities that have made them the primary tools of Western foreign policy, and which also mean they will only work in limited circumstances. When something is a matter of national priority – obtaining nuclear weapons, returning ‘Russian lands’ – a fall in GDP is simply a price worth paying. Meanwhile diplomatic condemnation – the good opinion of countries that despise you, your values, and your desire to shake up the international order – is just background noise.

Even if the Western response has since been amplified, the initial reaction to Russian aggression in Ukraine was marked above all else by a sort of incredulity; this was simply not meant to happen in the rules-based international order. Vice president Kamala Harris observed in disbelieving tones that we were ‘talking about the potential for war in Europe… it’s been over 70 years’. While the various former Yugoslav countries might have thoughts about her timeline, the sense of unreality is fascinating.

It’s not as if we were offered no warning signs, no glimpse of what might be to come. After a decade of careful rebuilding, Moscow proved in Georgia in 2008 and Ukraine in 2014 that it was more than willing to put its renewed military might to use in pursuing foreign policy objectives. Despite this, policymakers across the West find themselves caught flat-footed; when we ask what more we can do, the answer is ‘very little’ because we conceded this fight long before it started.

When the Cold War ended and communism was at last defeated, the West set about assembling its own narrative model of history, one that it would come to believe in more devoutly than even the most fervent Marxist. While even Stalin believed that the USSR was merely the first stage of communist evolution, however inevitable, the new liberal history announced that their utopia had been attained. There could be no improvement or challenge to this model of government. Sure, there would be problems to iron out: countries to bring into the fold, trade systems to perfect, policy tweaks to be argued over by technocrats. But the fundamental problem of ‘history’ was over, we were told.

Embracing international trade would bring prosperity, and prosperity would usher in a middle class hungry for democratic governance. The revolution was inevitable, and would be televised by a free Western press. It’s easy to see how this model could seduce politicians; there is no conflict between growth and democracy, between trade and ethics. Enriching your enemies would defeat them as one by one they fell into line, Laissez-faire as the most effective foreign policy tool of its age.

While some authors felt a degree of unease – Robert Cooper noted in 2002 that the great unknown for Europe was whether Russia could be integrated into the whole – the prevailing view was utopian. And besides, as the Atlantic told us in 2001, ‘Russia is finished’: doomed to irrelevance in an American order.

We were arriving at last in a world free of the scourge of conflict between nations, as the Economist’s introduction to the world in 2001 put it. This view, if somewhat dented, survived 9/11. It even survived Russia’s invasion of Georgia in 2008; the government’s 2010 Strategic Defence review argued that we had failed to appreciate ‘the new security realities of the post Cold War world’, insisting on maintaining ‘scores of tanks in Germany’ rather than pivoting to the real world issues of fighting tribesman in Afghanistan.

Even Putin’s seizure of Crimea was insufficient to break this spell for some. The idea that the West should ‘rethink its optimism…that rising non-Western states can be persuaded to join the West and play by its rules’ resulted from ‘the illusion of geopolitics’. The seizure of Crimea was a signal of ‘Russia’s geopolitical vulnerability, not its strength’, and Moscow and Beijing could hope merely to be ‘part-time spoilers at best’. Events were occurring, but history remained frozen.

It’s hard not to see in this mindset an echo of Norman Angell’s ‘Great Illusion’; no matter how likely conflict between nations seemed, no matter how likely war became, it would be averted simply because economic interdependence would guarantee ‘the good behaviour of one state to another’. The rules-based international order was self-enforcing.

We can interpret the failure of this model through the words of three leaders. The first is Tony Blair, meeting Putin for the first time and telling Alastair Campbell that here at last was a Russian leader who was going to be ‘OK’. He was far from the only politician to make this misjudgement; Barack Obama, laid into Republican challenger Mitt Romney in 2012 over his assertion that Russia – not Al Qaeda – was the primary geopolitical threat facing the US. The 1980s were ‘calling to ask for their foreign policy back because, you know, the Cold War’s been over for 20 years’.

The third and wisest of this trio is the fictional Captain Barbossa, who remarked in the Pirates of the Caribbean that the pirate’s code is ‘more what you’d call ‘guidelines’ than actual rules’. He, at least, would have understood that the ‘rules-based international order’ that came into being after Nuremberg is, for all of the theory and structure built around it, dependent both on goodwill and the threat of meaningful enforcement. Britain, in particular, should have been aware of this point; it spent a good chunk of 2020 considering the possibility of breaking its withdrawal agreement with the EU.

The hope that people will buy into the system as it stood replaced its meaningful maintenance; a policy of walking softly with no stick. To repurpose Stalin’s question, how many divisions has the president? Well, plenty – but none that he is willing to use. It is this belief in American reluctance that is driving Chinese assertiveness in the South China Sea; Rear Admiral Luo Yuan summarised Beijing’s view with his observation that what America ‘fears the most is taking casualties’. It has no stomach to stand up for the order it built.

It can hardly be surprised in turn that it is beginning to show signs of failure. Its challengers are marked by the possession of military force and the willingness to use it, its defenders by their reluctance. As Krauthammer put it, decline is a choice. While the West embraced it, Vladimir Putin did not.

How to cook with wild garlic

In British cooking we have traditionally had a complicated relationship with garlic. Let the french use it to their hearts’ content: fine in a Toulouse but no thank you in a Cumberland. Suggestive of this wariness is wild garlic’s many names – ‘devil’s garlic’, ‘gypsy’s onions’ and ‘stinking Jenny’ amongst others.

But in recent years British cooks have taken to wild garlic with unabashed relish (and indeed it makes rather a good one, as seen here). Food always tastes better having foraged or hunted for it yourself and so it is with wild garlic. The leaves appear in March and you will find them throughout spring but they are best picked early in the season. The joys of foraging can though sometimes be dampened by shrill warnings of the dangers at every turn amongst the flora. Don’t fret: yes you may mistake the similarly leaved – and poisonous – Lily of the Valley for wild garlic as you roam amongst the deciduous woodland where it is found in most abundance. But crush a little in your hand and the pungent garlic scent will dispel any doubts as to what you have found.

As Lucy Carr-Ellison and Jemima Jones (of Belgravia’s Wild by Tart) explain, ‘The first shoots of wild garlic emerge from the wetter areas of the woodland floor in the early spring sunshine, before the trees above have had a chance to shade out everything that grows beneath… The delicate newer leaves are the ones to pick.’ You can also use the buds, which are excellent when pickled as Katherine Holbrook shows. There are other more unusual uses too: the leaves can be dried and then turned into a garlic salt.

With a pungent smell and a sweet, grassy taste – somewhere between normal clove garlic and oniony chives – wild garlic does not disappoint. The leaves lend themselves well to wilting into Chinese stir fries, to create a twist on an aioli, in a salsa verde or in all manner of Italian dishes: risotto, ribollita, minestrone or to make an alternative pesto. Ben Tish (of the Cubitt House Group) uses it atop flatbreads to create garlic bread. It makes a lovely lunch when combined with potato and choizo in Gill Meller’s tortilla. You can do an interesting twist on creamed spinach, to accompany a juicy steak. You can use it to create a garlic butter to give a fine makeover to chicken kiev. Ed Smith uses it in a cooling raita and has plenty of other ideas besides. And to enjoy it in is adulterated glory turn it into a simple soup – possibly combining with nettles, borage, wild sorrel, Alexanders or just plain old spinach.

Of course a large haul from foraging also calls for preserving: Bettina Campolucci Bordi (founder of Bettina’s Kitchen) says “We collect our wild garlic from Hampstead Heath. I … blend it with oil and freeze it in ice cubes trays. That way if I need a hit of flavour for a soup or stew, these are ready for me at any given time.” Foraging also means you have a chance of finding it with its beautiful white flowers – which you will see from April through to June – that provide both flavour and decoration.

Spring is around the corner. The daffodils will soon be in bloom. But do not neglect to enjoy the wild garlic lurking nearby the golden host. For you will feel all the joy of Wordsworth if you do. Indeed, ‘A poet could not but be gay, / In such a jocund company.’

London’s most unusual dining spots

With around 15,000 options to choose from, how can a London restaurant stand out? Some have pulled out all the stops – setting up kitchens on water, in the air or offering something completely new. Here is our selection of the venues that best combine uniqueness with top-notch cuisine.

Hawksmoor Canary Wharf

This new East London joint sits on a floating pontoon that softly rises and falls with the tide. Diners must walk the plank (well, bridge) to enter the sleek lounge, which is complete with the 1920s-style sconce lighting, leather banquettes and marble-top bar we’ve come to expect from Hawksmoor’s restaurants.

The group’s new eco-friendly pavilion just next to Canary Wharf station is made of glass and aluminium with twinkling lights that reflect back at you from the water. From the outside, it manages to look like a shipping container, one floor of a swanky skyscraper and a spaceship all at once – yet somehow it works. There are plans to plant wildflowers and grasses on the roof to suck up carbon.

The menu is classic Hawksmoor fare: slab-like steaks priced by weight, sweet and meaty lobsters and oysters served multiple ways (try them roasted with bone marrow). All sumptuous and cooked to perfection. Make sure to start your meal with one of the restaurant’s signature cocktails while admiring the view from the waterside terrace.

thehawksmoor.com/locations/wood-wharf/

London in the Sky

Not one for foodies who are afraid of heights, this experience involves dining at a table suspended 100ft in the air – the equivalent of around 5 two-storey houses stacked on top of each other.

Diners meet just by the O2 arena, are strapped in using three harnesses then wooshed up by crane along with their table for panoramic views over the Canary Wharf, London docks and towards the City. The experience will run this year from 28 April to 20 June.

There are eight flights a day (running from breakfast to cocktails and dinner) and they go ahead regardless of weather. The 22-seat table is covered but you’re still at the whim of the elements, so dress accordingly.

The menu is curated by top chefs and served right at the Sky Table. Dinner includes 3 courses plus wine, with prices starting from £149, while a 45-minute breakfast flight costs from £79.

londoninthesky.co.uk

Dans le Noir?

From some of the best views in London to no view at all…diners at Dans le Noir? eat in pitch black – an attempt to shift the focus to their other senses and get a new perspective on food.

Visitors are asked to leave their phones and other electronic devices in the lobby and are then led to their seats by blind or partially sighted waiters.

The menus are specially curated to evoke different textures, temperatures, aromas and flavours and kept secret in advance. You simply pick from one of four colour-coded options – red (meat), blue (fish), green (vegetarian) and white (chef’s special) – and let the chef know about any allergies. Then it’s up to you to use your taste buds to guess what you’re eating. At the end, the dishes are revealed.

The meat comes from Smithfield market (just round the corner) and the seafood is sustainably sourced from a family-run fishery. Avoid wearing white – as there’s likely to be a few spills and mishaps as you fumble your way through the courses. Prices start from £48 for a two course menu.

london.danslenoir.com

London Shell Company

If you’re not content with one view from your table, how about 2h30 of different views? Dinner with The London Shell Company involves hopping aboard The Prince Regent, a 30-year-old wooden barge, and setting sail as you enjoy a magnificent 5-course set menu.

The route transports you from Paddington to Camden and back via iconic landmarks such as London Zoo and Regent’s Park. Cruises run from Wednesday to Saturday, departing at 7pm and returning by 9.30pm (cost £65). Lunch jaunts operate on Saturdays and Sundays with the same food at the same price.

The menu changes daily based on what ingredients are freshest but typically involves a smorgasbord of fishy delights such as buttery Orkney scallops, smoked cod’s roe and spider crab risotto. Co-founder Harry Lobek comes from a sommelier background – so the wine list is sublime: short but brimming with little-known artisanal varieties.

The watery views and stylish decor make for an uber-romantic experience. The company also has a second boat, The Grand Duchess, which does static meals (no cruising) and has an a la carte menu.

londonshellco.com

WC

A toilet as old as Queen Victoria might not spring to mind as somewhere to grab a drink and some small plates. However WC (cleverly Wine & Charcuterie) in Clapham is one of the best date spots in the area.

The former water closet has sat under Clapham Common Station for more than 100 years. The white tiles and mosaic floors remain – with the bar now serving a menu of about 35 carefully chosen wines as well as cocktails and spirits.

The food menu is designed for grazing, featuring dishes such as tartiflette and wild mushrooms with polenta, as well as the obligatory cheese and charcuterie boards. There’s also a plant-based platter with Vegan cheeses. Prices range from £5 for a pot of olives to £19 for the meat board.

The WC was lovingly restored over 3 decades by the owners and the toilets are, fittingly, original.

The owners also have another WC-turned-swanky-wine-bar in Bloomsbury.

www.wcbars.co.uk

The Clink

Barbed wire and an airport-style security check greet you as you arrive at The Clink’s South London outpost. The venue? Her Majesty’s Prison Brixton.

The Clink is a charity that helps prisoners secure qualifications in food/hospitality, while working their way towards a better life. All the food on the menu is cooked and served by the inmates.

The charity has four restaurants and more than 100 graduates have since been released from prison. Its Brixton restaurant is housed in an old governor’s house dating back to the early 1800s. All the leather upholstery and boardroom tables are made by prisoners at HMP Frankland (a jail in Durham).

Rules are relatively strict: mobile phones, bags and wallets are not allowed in the prison/restaurant (drugs, scissors and knives are also, unsurprisingly, banned). But once you’re past security, things feel relatively normal save for a few quirks – plastic cutlery and no alcohol.

The menu changes regularly: previous dishes have included twice-baked goats’ cheese soufflé, seafood terrine and chocolate and hazelnut mille-feuille.

theclinkcharity.org/restaurants/brixton

Will the Ukraine crisis finally end Stop the War’s hold over Labour?

For weeks, discussion about partygate dominated Britain’s newspapers. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has put paid to that. But Boris Johnson is mistaken if he thinks he has been saved. Instead Keir Starmer is likely to be the biggest beneficiary of the Ukrainian crisis.

This might come as a surprise to some. After all, history suggests that a Conservative government should be able to benefit from this conflict by relying on its traditional reputation for being strong on defence and foreign policy in general. Yet the Ukrainian war is different, at least for now, to skirmishes that have arisen in the past. It is a conflict in which Britain has firmly taken a side but to which no British troops will be sent: the main impact on Britons will probably be confined to even higher energy prices and a steeper rise in inflation. Scuttling around the world stage in recent weeks, Boris Johnson appeared hopeful that waving the flag and making dramatic speeches was a way to make voters forget all about partygate. For now, he is probably right. But this sentiment among voters is unlikely to last.

Yet for Starmer, the crisis has presented a further opportunity to face down party critics. It is one he has grasped firmly. In the face of opposition within Labour ranks, and especially from its biggest trade union affiliates, moving the party away from some of the commitments made in the 2019 manifesto has proved tricky for the Labour leader. Since the autumn, Starmer’s fortunes have however improved. This is no doubt helped by poll leads courtesy of partygate. Critics like Laura Pidcock have effectively given up the fight, while the Socialist Campaign Group of MPs, once Corbyn’s Praetorian Guard, is divided over how best to respond as many fervent supporters of the former leader drift away to join those parties associated with the People’s Alliance of the Left.

The Ukraine crisis has only served to further weaken the Corbynite left, many of whom belong to Stop the War, an organisation set up to oppose war in Afghanistan. If today it is not exactly pro-Putin it is very much anti-Western and turns a blind eye to the shortcomings of any country – such as Russia – that finds itself in conflict with Britain or the United States. So, following the Kremlin line, it has blamed Nato ‘expansion’ for threatening Russia. This is a view it kept to even after Putin ordered troops into Ukraine; it issued a statement to that effect signed by 11 members of the Socialist Campaign Group, as well as Jeremy Corbyn himself. Threatened with having the Labour whip withdrawn, these MPs – including John McDonnell and Diane Abbott – all meekly agreed to remove their names. This was the equivalent of neither having your cake nor eating it: associating themselves with a deeply unpopular view about Nato culpability, the MPs then demonstrated their impotence by falling into line with the leadership. At the same time Starmer also severely curtailed the activities of Young Labour, long a redoubt of Corbynite resistance, for its representatives’ holding similar views about the conflict.

Corbynites then find themselves in a much weaker position now than a week ago. By miscalculating the public mood, they have handed Starmer the confidence to discipline them. The upshot will likely be a further exodus of Corbynites from Labour ranks. Perhaps, too, it will break the hold that Stop the War has enjoyed over some of the Labour left more generally by exposing its one-eyed view of international relations.

In the short-term, Ukraine has left Starmer stronger in his party. But Putin’s invasion also looks set to at least entrench his position in the country. Why? Because as the crisis developed, Johnson’s hope that it would allow him to play the statesman has been dashed. Partygate still casts a dark shadow of mistrust over the Prime Minister; just before the invasion, most voters thought he was mishandling the crisis. Starmer’s position has been consistently ahead of the game, calling for ever tougher sanctions, a position which enjoys majority support. 

Until the crisis, few appeared to care about the extent to which the Conservative party has been bankrolled by Russian oligarchs. Since Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, all that has changed: we are now a long way from leading Conservatives being able to boast – as they had done so in the past – that donations from rich Russians were nothing to be ashamed of, and just showed how much such figures admired their party. Claims that ‘Moscow gold’ was funding Labour used to be meat and drink to Conservatives – it is more than possible that the favour can now be returned as a result of Putin’s war.

Scholz’s token military gesture won’t undo years of neglect

Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s announcement that Germany is sending weapons and missiles to Ukraine – and is increasing its defence budget to two per cent – marks the mother of all U-turns. But it comes too late, too late for Ukraine. Years of Germany allowing its military to atrophy cannot be done overnight. Compromised by her cosy relations with the tyrant in the Kremlin, open to economic blackmail by being stretched over an oil barrel and a gas pipeline, and guilt-stricken by her Nazi past, today’s Germany is in a very bad place indeed.

Yet you might not realise it from the fawning reaction to Germany’s renewed interest in militarisation. Scholz’s move has been hailed for its decisiveness and bravery, yet in reality he had little choice. Pressure from other members of the Nato alliance was mounting. This was also a shamefaced response to an outburst last week from his country’s top soldier. In one of the most extraordinary statements ever made by an army commander about his own forces. Lieutenant-General Alfons Mais, head of the German army, wrote in a LinkedIn post that the Bundeswehr was ‘standing bare’. He admitted that the options that his troops could offer politicians and Germany’s allies in the current Ukraine war were ‘extremely limited’ and added for good measure that he was mightily ‘pissed off’.

Things have clearly not improved in the past two years since the then-German defence minister, one Ursula von der Leyen, shuffled off to take up her new post as unelected president of the European Commission. She left a military made up of planes that couldn’t fly and soldiers without proper kit. Vladimir Putin really must be quaking in his snowboots.

Quite a change, then, from 22 June 1941, when 3.8 million German soldiers, with thousands of tanks and planes, crossed Russia’s and Ukraine’s borders to launch Operation Barbarossa, the biggest invasion in world history, initiating the bloodiest conflict of all time. The decline of German militarism that had terrified Europe from the 18th century to the end of the Second World War is an easy concept to explain. The catastrophe of the war meant that Germans needed no persuading in turning their backs on militarism. But Germany’s place as Europe’s economic powerhouse without the military apparatus to back it up has become increasingly untenable as the United States looks to pull out of upholding Europe’s security.

Until Scholz’s screeching U-turn, the most military aid that Germany had offered Ukraine – a country that it once conquered and occupied so brutally – was the much derided five thousand helmets. When it came to military matters things had obviously come to a pretty pathetic pass.

In years gone by, the motor that powered Germany from a collection of squabbling and disunited statelets into a formidable colossus was Prussia, previously an impoverished kingdom languishing in obscurity in the sands of Pomerania, that under the rule of Frederick the Great, who reigned from 1740 to 1772, rose to be a major player among Europe’s great powers. In successive wars ‘Old Fritz’ and his Generals smashed the armies of Austria, checked those of Russia, France and Sweden, divided Poland, and, in the words of a later German statesman Friedrich von Schroetter, turned Prussia into a fully militarised state: ‘not a country with an army but an army with a country’.

Prussian patriotism turned into German nationalism during the wars with Napoleon in the early 19th century when a trio of commanders – Scharnhorst, Gneisenau, and the military theorist Clausewitz – forged the armies that resisted and eventually defeated even the great Bonaparte. Fifty years later the ‘Iron Chancellor’, Otto von Bismarck, completed their work with successful wars of conquest against Denmark, Austria, and finally France, proclaimed a united German empire, and established Germany as Europe’s predominant power.

At the dawn of the 20th century, Germany was a fully functioning military state under the bombastic Kaiser Wilhelm II. Generals literally called the shots. The political parties in the Reichstag were practically powerless. And uniformed officers were given ridiculously exaggerated respect: a phenomenon famously illustrated in 1906 when an imposter called Wilhelm Voigt dressed up as an army Captain, took over a squad of soldiers, and used them to help himself to the municipal funds of the town of Kopenick near Berlin, obediently handed over by terrified Treasury officials.

The results of such militarism soon followed: Germany played the primary part in launching the First World War in 1914, a conflict that killed ten million, devastated Europe, and brought the Bolshevik regime to power in Russia after Germany injected Lenin into the country like a poisonous bacillus. That catastrophe was dwarfed by the horrors of the Second World War, launched by a vengeful Nazi Germany, still in thrall to its military traditions, and laced by a virulent doctrine of racial superiority that murdered millions of Jews and Slavs in Poland and the Soviet Union.

In tandem with Barbarossa and the Holocaust, Hitler’s Wehrmacht used its well-honed military skills, bolstered by modern science and technology, to conquer and occupy most of Europe in a Blitzkrieg war that left the continent in ruins for the second time in a generation. Ignoring the moral nadir represented by the Nazis, professional German Generals like Rommel, Manstein, Guderian and Kesselring were among the war’s most celebrated and effective commanders. Fighting against enormous odds, such Generals, supported until the bitter end by the vast majority of Germany’s people, followed Hitler into the abyss.

The war left Germany on the floor, prostrate, in ruins, and utterly defeated. But she still retained strong cards to play in the bleak post-war world with the Cold War beginning. Occupied by the Allies, and disgraced by her criminal conduct in the war, the Federal Republic was not allowed to spend money in her own defence. Instead, she relied on the other Nato states to man the front lines dividing the democratic West from the Communist East, and was able to devote all her resources and considerable energies to rebuilding herself as Europe’s foremost economic, rather than military, power.

Nominally a Nato member, West Germany’s overwhelming sense of guilt at the abominations her armies had inflicted on the world, inoculated her against her former rampant militarism. It prevented her for half a century from deploying her troops in foreign conflicts, even in peacekeeping roles. Pacifism replaced militarism as the default mode of her ruling class, especially after the leftist ‘Generation of ’68’ came to power.

The fall of the Berlin Wall, the collapse of Soviet and East German Communism, and the reunification of the country in the early 1990s turbo-charged the process of Germany detaching herself from the Atlantic Alliance, easing her into a quicksand of queasy neutrality in the gathering conflict between the West and Vladimir Putin’s Russia. A key figure in this process was Gerhard Schroeder, chancellor of a newly unified Germany from 1998 to 2005 as head of a government which (then as now) consisted of a coalition between his own Social Democrats and the pacifist German Greens.

A close personal friend of Putin, almost unbelievably Schroeder described the Russian dictator as ‘a flawless democrat’ during the 2004 Orange Revolution in Ukraine that overthrew Putin’s puppet president, Viktor Yanukovich. One of the anti-American 68 Generation, Schroeder has been the main man responsible for transforming Germany from a stalwart pillar of the Western Alliance into its weakest sister.

Schroeder’s role in German politics has been even more crucial since he left office. When chancellor, he played a key part in the Nord Stream 2 pipeline project to pump gas from Putin’s Russia; he now chairs the board of both Nord Stream 2 and the Russian oil company Rosneft. After Schroeder’s successor as chancellor, Angela Merkel, cancelled Germany’s nuclear energy programme, the country became dependent on Russia for its energy needs, and now Russian gas and oil supplies almost half of Germany’s total energy consumption.

Small wonder, then, that Germany – militarily emasculated and impotent as she is, and politically worryingly indecisive and neutralised – has until now been dragging its feet in imposing meaningful sanctions on Russia. The result is that Germany has been left ‘standing bare’. It will take more than a token arms shipment and an uptick in its woefully inadequate defence budget to reverse seven decades of neglect.

Will western sanctions really hurt Putin?

Boris Johnson has announced that the UK will impose personal sanctions on Vladimir Putin and his foreign minister Sergei Lavrov – and is as drawing up a ‘hit list’ of Russian oligarchs to target. ‘We have to make it deeply painful for the oligarchs that support the Putin regime,’ said foreign secretary Liz Truss. ‘There are over a hundred Russian billionaires … We will come after you.’

Will such actions actually work? For many top Russians, they are a badge of honour. ‘What? You haven’t been sanctioned yet?’ asked one Russian senator of the head of a Duma committee during a break in a Russian television show on which I was also a guest in 2019. ‘What kind of patriot are you?’

The remark was intended as a joke – but in a very real sense, being sanctioned by the West has become a kite mark of loyalty to the regime. Even before Johnson’s announcement, hundreds of Russian parliamentarians, generals, intelligence officials had already been sanctioned by the US and EU for their role in the annexation of Crimea, the destruction of a Malaysian Airlines Boeing over Ukraine, and the poisoning of Sergei Skripal and his daughter, and of opposition leader Alexei Navalny. Indeed the first ever round of such personal sanctions – which ban travel and freeze accounts and property – were imposed even before Crimea over the Russian State’s imprisonment and murder of whistleblowing lawyer Sergei Magnitsky in 2009.

If such sanctions were intended to make the Kremlin think twice about its aggressive and murderous behaviour, they have clearly failed. In some ways they have done Putin’s work for him, forcing wealthy Russians to bring their capital home where the Kremlin can better control it – and its owners.

It’s a similar story with the so-called ‘sectoral’ sanctions post-Crimea, which cut off major Russian companies from raising international financing. Gazprom, Rosneft and the others carried on just fine ­– even financing the now-binned £11 billion Nord-Stream 2 gas pipeline from their own resources. Small wonder that Putin’s ambassador to Sweden could confidently assert two weeks ago that ‘Russia doesn’t give a shit about sanctions.’

According to Bill Browder, formerly the largest foreign portfolio investor in Russia and Sergei Magnitsky’s employer, the problem so far has been that the sanctions imposed so far have ‘not caused any real pain’ to Putin or his inner circle. Even the UK’s Unexplained Wealth Orders, which controversially reverse the burden of proof and force persons under suspicion to prove the origin of their UK-based assets, have been ‘a true disappointment, not imposed widely or properly,’ says Browder.

So what kind of sanctions would Putin’s inner circle care about? Throwing the net much wider would be a start – ‘to create penalties for the enablers,’ as Browder puts it, from Putin’s propagandists to the western bankers and accountants who help the regime’s allies stash their money. In theory, Britain’s 2018 Magnitsky Act gave the government powers to investigate all money linked to foreign corruption, including in British territories such as the Cayman and British Virgin Islands, favourite parking spots for kleptocratic cash. In practice, it’s been pretty much business as usual. But if the UK and US governments were to ‘proactively require [offshore bankers] to come to the government with information and impose penalties for withholding it,’ Browder believes that billions in dirty Russian money will be uncovered.

There are signs that the UK government is already investigating a far wider circle of Putin enablers than just the oligarch ‘purses’ alleged to hold his personal cash. According to a senior UK security source, such a list could include top Russian media bosses and presenters as well as personal associates and family members of top Russian officials – up to and including Putin’s alleged mistresses gymnast Alina Kabayeva and Svetlana Krivonogikh, whom the Panama Papers alleged had amassed a $100 million fortune. ‘Previously our approach was focused on law enforcement,’ says the source. ‘There’s a feeling that it’s time to make this political.’

How to track these people’s money? Financial sleuths from Browder’s Magnitsky Global Justice Campaign showed the way a decade ago, tracking down a giddying network of shell companies, offshore trusts and Cypriot banks who laundered some $200 million stolen by corrupt Russian officials from their own treasury. That investigation proved that complexity is not the same as secrecy – at every stage of the laundry, someone’s signature has to appear on the paperwork. It’s just a question of looking for it. 

More recently, journalists working for imprisoned opposition leader Alexei Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Foundation uncovered a similarly tangled web of fake rental and consultancy payments from Russian state enterprises to various members of Putin’s family – including Krivonogikh – that included financing for a vast palace on the Black Sea. Much of the evidence was not buried in secret bank records but publicly available on Instagram. The view from Krivonogikh’s seaside Monaco apartment revealed, after a little sleuthing on Google maps, her address. Her address led to the offshore company that owned the property, and so on. Combine that with leaked financial records from the Panama Papers and the Mossack Fonseca cache, the paper trail is hiding in plain sight.

If journalists can do it, governments should be able to as well – if the political will is there. Already, Vladimir Soloviev, one of the Kremlin’s favourite TV attack dogs, has been banned from visiting his Italian villa in the wake of the Ukraine invasion. ‘I was told that Europe is a citadel of rights, that everything is permitted … you told us that Europe has sacred property rights!’ complained Solovyev on his weekly TV show. ‘All of a sudden, now they say: “Are you Russian? Then we will close your bank account.”’

It’s vital not to prove Solovyev right. Measures should be targeted not against Russians in general but only against the regime’s insiders. Indeed many of the Russians who live in the West do so precisely because they have fallen foul of the Kremlin. ‘I know that many wealthy Russians in London are anti-Putin,’ says Lyubov Galkina, co founder of Zima magazine for the UK’s Russian-speaking community and Zima Russian restaurant in Soho. ‘Some of them moved here to protect their wealth and to give their children better future. And they love and respect this country.’

Putin and his propagandists would love it if the West began treating all 144 million Russians as the Kremlin’s willing collaborators. The answer is not blanket Russophobia, but smart use of data to target the people who enable his regime and its propaganda message. ‘It’s taken the biggest land invasion since world war two to awaken the west to Putin’s evil,’ says Browder. ‘We’re in a different world than we were two days ago.’

Paralysing Russia’s central bank could cripple Putin’s plans

Pushing Russia out of Swift, the international bank transfer system, has long been spoken of as one of the most forceful economic moves the West can make. Only last week Joe Biden suggested the idea was off the table as the Europeans did not want to do it, with so many countries dependent on Russia’s natural gas. But after frantic negotiations, we have movement. The USA, UK, European Union and Canada have agreed plans to cut at least some of Russia’s banks out of the Swift as well as to work to stop the Russian central bank from accessing its vast reserves, estimated to total roughly $630 billion. But will this round of response get Vladimir Putin’s attention? 

One of the difficulties, so far, has been the discovery of just how prepared Putin was for the economic pain. Russia’s international reserves are the fourth biggest reserve pile in the world, equivalent to 40 per cent of the country’s GDP: designed to allow Russia to withstand at least short-term economic pain. 

Germany’s suspension of the $11 billion Nord Stream 2 pipeline will have been a blow to Putin, as the pipeline was Russia’s most immediate opportunity to vastly increase state revenue from its gas reserves. But with an energy crunch already underway throughout the West, Putin’s calculation that Europe wouldn’t cut off its current Russian gas imports has broadly proved correct. In the words of Biden, the sanctions agreed by the West so far have been ‘specifically designed to allow energy payments to continue.’ 

Last night’s decision to remove a handful of Russian banks from the Swift network comes with its own risks. Making it harder for other international groups to do business with Russian banks will be a sting for the Russian economy, but Putin has been preparing for this scenario too, building a domestic alternative to Swift for the better part of a decade. What worries UK officials now is that by further removing Russia from Swift, it becomes an increasingly likely target for retaliation. Unlike Russia, the UK economy is hugely reliant on Swift, and a cyberattack would cause far more damage to London now than it would to Moscow. Germany, which has relied on Russia for almost half of its gas imports over the past few years, is perhaps the most exposed to a Swift expulsion: if it cannot pay Gazprom – Russia’s state-owned energy company – Putin can be expected to turn off the taps. 

That western countries are increasingly willing to take this risk suggests both a commitment to put incrementally more economic pressure on Russia as Putin’s tanks move further into Ukraine, as well as an increasingly united front between countries like the US and Germany that didn’t exist as recently as a month ago. 

But it may not be Swift, the pipeline or sanctions that turn out to be the West’s strongest economic play. In the words of EU Commission president Ursula von der Leyen, plans to ‘paralyse the assets of Russia’s central bank’ may be what starts to cripple Putin’s plans. For Russia’s $630 billion worth of reserves – well-diversified in hard metals, bonds, and securities in a variety of foreign currencies – to be of much use to Putin, they will eventually need to be converted into local currency, used to prop up the Russian economy when its businesses are cut off from major markets. 

Working to freeze a good chunk of these reserves would start to limit Putin’s ability to bail out his country when the rest of the world is working to tank its economy. Such economic hardship would be difficult to overcome at the best of times, but would be made especially tough when it’s not at all obvious right now that Putin has the backing of his own citizens to be waging an unprovoked war against Ukraine.

Parliaments clash in Six Nations fixture

Away from Ukraine, it was all kicking off elsewhere in London yesterday. As the England rugby team was labouring to a 23-19 win against their Welsh rivals over at Twickenham, a similar fixture was taking place a few miles down the road at the nearby Richmond RFC ground. For, as per Six Nations tradition, a Westminster parliamentary team ran out to to take on their counterparts from the Senedd who had made the trip from Cardiff Bay.

The London team was compromised of staff and members from both chambers in Parliament and was coming off the back of a successful 12-5 defeat of the Holyrood team in Edinburgh. But the Welsh team are made of sterner suff, having won nine consecutive fixtures in a row. And yesterday they hit the magic ten as they won comfortably 20-10 against a side which appropriately contained Rugby MP Mark Pawsey, Angela Rayner’s ally Sam Tarry MP and the Plaid nationalist Ben Lake MP.

Unfortunately, for one MP the game ended prematurely, after poor Stephen Crabb MP got his ankle snapped in a tackle by his fellow Tory, James Evans MS. Steerpike understands that the unfortunate former Welsh secretary is slowly recovering after being forced to have surgery last night. The jokes about Tory tensions between their Westminster and devolved administrations contingents continue to write themselves. A few minutes later, another player on the London team also had their collar bone snapped in two and three of their ribs broken. Ouch. 

The main dispute off the pitch otherwise seems to have been over the pre-game dinner laid on by the Commons and Lords team. One source bemoaned to Mr S that they had a ‘spread of wotsits and lager laid on for us’ adding ‘we expected better from London.’ An opposing player hit back: ‘It was a two hour long drinks do for rugby players, not a Michelin star taster menu.’

When it comes to England v Wales in politics or sport, some things never change.

Sunday round-up: war in Ukraine ‘a very long haul’, says Truss

Liz Truss – War in Ukraine could last ‘a number of years’

The Foreign Secretary conducted the government’s media round this morning, in the week which saw Russia invade Ukraine. The capital of Kiev remains under siege from Russian forces, and, as of this morning, the country’s second largest city Kharkiv is also seeing fighting on its streets. Speaking to Trevor Phillips, Liz Truss said that everyone should be prepared for ‘a very long haul:

The UK ‘does welcome refugees’

Keir Starmer and the shadow home secretary Yvette Cooper called on the government to remove barriers for fleeing Ukrainians to come to the UK. This was prompted by claims that the bureaucracy in processing visas was causing unnecessary hardship. Truss defended the government’s handling of the process so far:

I ‘absolutely’ support Brits joining Ukrainian struggle

Sophie Raworth also interviewed Truss, and asked her about a call to arms by Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelensky, who has called for an ‘international legion’ of volunteers to help defend his country:

UK should be prepared to ‘take an economic hit’

Truss told Raworth that price hikes and other economic problems resulting from sanctions on Russia would be uncomfortable, but would be worth it to help safeguard the principles of liberty and democracy:

David Lammy – Russian ambassador should be asked to leave

Phillips also interviewed the shadow foreign secretary David Lammy. Lammy defended Keir Starmer’s suggestion that the Russian ambassador should be unceremoniously shown the door, saying that Ambassador Kelin has told ‘lie after lie’:

Sanctions on luxuries are ‘part of a package’

Phillips challenged Lammy over Labour’s calls for sanctions on Vladimir Putin, suggesting that the party was trying to sound tough, but asking for something that made little material difference to the situation:

Chris Deverell – ‘I can’t see how Putin has enough troops to maintain control’

And finally, the former head of the UK’s Joint Forces Command, Sir Chris Deverell, gave Phillips his assessment of Putin’s gamble:

Germany’s defence spending boost will improve European security

In yet another sign of how dramatically Putin’s invasion of Ukraine has changed Europe’s attitude to both Russia and security, the German Chancellor Olaf Scholz has just announced that the country will spend two percent of GDP on defence by 2024. This is a significant move, Germany currently only spends about 1.5 percent on defence, and will make Germany the biggest defence spender in Europe.

Combine this with Berlin’s decision not to certify Nord Stream 2, its acceptance that it needs to reduce its dependence on Russian gas and its change of heart about sending arms into a war zone, and it is quite clear that the country’s strategic posture is very different today than it was a week ago. As Fraser has said, for Europe the world now divides into the time before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and after.t

The longer that Ukraine hold out, the more profound this shift in Europe’s approach will become. The measures taken against Russia’s central bank shows that Europe is becomingly increased prepared to put maximum pressure on Moscow. The Biden administration also deserves credit for helping midwife this new European approach into being. The ‘constant coaxing’ of Berlin that Jake Sullivan, Biden’s national security adviser, talked about is bearing fruit.

Ensuring security in Europe and deterring Russian revanchism will become easier with Germany pulling its weight on defence spending. Berlin’s role will becoming increasingly important as the US gradually shifts more and more of its attention to Asia.

The leadership and bravery of Volodymyr Zelensky

So that’s what leadership looks like. It looks like Volodymyr Zelensky. It looks like a president staying put in his capital city despite coming under attack from one of the largest military forces on Earth. It looks like a tired but proud man rallying his people to defend their nation from foreign onslaught. It looks like someone who warns his enemies that ‘When you attack us, you will see our faces. Not our backs, but our faces.’ It looks like someone who chooses to stay and fight rather than to run away. When US officials reportedly offered to help evacuate Zelensky, he told them he needed ammunition, ‘not a ride’.

‘I need ammunition, not a ride’. If someone doesn’t put that on a t-shirt, I swear I’ll lose my faith in politics and entrepreneurship.

I had forgotten what political leadership looked like. Most of us had, if we’re being honest. Three decades of being ruled by technocrats and bumblers will do that. We have a political class that actively eschews leadership. Which outsources decision-making to Brussels or to unaccountable quangos. Which prefers phoney chumminess to captaining the nation in a serious, principled way. Which is not even willing to withstand a Twitterstorm, never mind a foreign invasion. Our leaders won’t even say only women have a cervix, lest a few hundred angry eggs on the internet scream ‘BIGOT’ at them. Heaven knows how they’d cope if it was Putin rather than PC irritants breathing down their necks.

Zelensky has reminded us what political leadership looks like. I cannot remember the last time a national leader embodied the virtues of courage and confidence as much as Zelensky has over the past few days. His steadfastness stands in stark contrast not only to the cynical warmongering of Vladimir Putin but also to the perfidious antics of Nato and the EU. Western leaders talk a good fight against Putin’s regime, but as push comes very much to shove it seems to be just Zelensky and the incredibly brave people of Ukraine who are standing up for freedom against the Putin menace.

Zelensky has done exactly what needed to be done in this terrifying moment of invasion. He has made himself visible to his people. He posted a selfie video showing himself on the deserted streets of Kiev. ‘I am here’, he said – extraordinarily powerful words in the circumstances.

He posted another video featuring him with his top officials, out on the streets, in brilliant defiance of Russia’s dark desire to take out his government. ‘We are all here, defending our independence, our country, and it will stay this way’, he said. ‘Glory to our defenders, both male and female’, he cried. These brave government officials, transformed overnight from managers of society into defenders of Ukraine’s very existence from the fourth largest army in the world, are about as far from being ‘a gang of drug addicts and neo-Nazis’, as Putin branded them, as it is possible to be.

Zelensky has given voice to the Ukrainian people’s determination to defend their national sovereignty. In a televised speech shortly before the invasion started – which he gave in Russian, to address the Russian people – he made a passionate defence of the right to self-determination. ‘We want to build our own history’, he said. ‘Peacefully. Calmly. Truthfully.’ Both peace and principles are at stake in this war, he said – in particular the principle that every nation must have the ‘right to define [its] own future’. Attack Ukraine’s right to determine its destiny for itself, and ‘you are going to see our faces’, he said. ‘Not our backs, our faces.’

One of the most moving parts of the speech was when Zelensky pushed back against Putin’s libel about Ukraine being a hotbed of fascism: ‘You are being told that we are Nazis. But how can a nation be called Nazi after sacrificing more than eight million lives to eradicate Nazism?’ I hope these words hit home not only with the ordinary Russians Zelensky was trying to reach, but also with those in the West who too freely, and so wrongly, bandy around the word ‘Nazi’ to demonise people they disagree with.

Zelensky could not be more different to the sorry excuses for leaders we are lumbered with in the West. Where Zelensky refuses to hide from the Russian army, Justin Trudeau runs away from protesting truckers – his own fellow citizens. Boris Johnson hid in a fridge to avoid a TV interview. America’s calamitous withdrawal from Afghanistan, during which many of its allies were left behind, left to the bloody mercy of the Taliban, suggests the Biden administration is also not trustworthy when the going gets tough.

Maybe I’m being ungenerous. The threat of war can bring out the best in people. It can focus the mind like nothing else. Perhaps some of our leaders would step up if tanks crossed our borders. Besides, the problem runs deeper than the questionable qualities of the people at the top of society. The larger calamity is that our societies now discourage heroism and bravery.

We have virtually pathologised these virtues. We’re told to run and hide in the event of a terror attack. Emergency services are so tied up in red tape that they often don’t venture into life-and-death situations until they know it’s safe to do so. Younger generations are educated to obsess over their self-esteem, and to view every slight or controversial comment as an intolerable assault on their very being. Our society nurtures fragility and self-obsession more than it does the great civic virtues of courage and pluck. If Russia came here, I just cannot envision our youths preparing petrol bombs, as young Ukrainians have done. Surely they’d be seeking out the ‘safe space’ where they so often take refuge from hurtful words and ideas.

So, thank you, Mr Zelensky, for reminding us what bravery looks like, and what true leadership can do. Ukraine is lucky to have you. And the UK could learn a great deal from your refusal to run away from the fight for freedom and sovereignty.

Why Britain should offer asylum to Ukrainians

There is not much more that Britain can do for Ukraine. We have done more than most: sent 2,000 anti-tank missiles and stationed troops in eastern Europe to help other allies. But as thousands flee Kiev – not knowing if Putin will turn it into the next Grozny – there is something immediate and profound that Britain can do: offer asylum.

Brexit powers of border control can be used to allow anyone with a Ukrainian passport to come here. Ukraine has a population of 44 million – it’s a small country. It wasn’t so long ago that 450 million Europeans had an unconditional right to live and work in the UK – and our country didn’t topple over then. So a generous and immediate offer to Ukraine would be doable and a clear demonstration that Britain is an ally worth having and is one of the few things we can do, now, for its people. 

Britain is suffering an acute labour shortage, so the economics are right. But even if they weren’t, we are in a crisis where the notion of solidarity with allies is being tested. Offering sanctuary to those Ukrainians fleeing the prospect of being bombed or persecuted by Putin would show that “Global Britain” is more than a soundbite.

Offering asylum in this way can be controversial, as it was in 1972 when a Tory government offered to fly over 27,000 Ugandan Asians persecuted by Idi Amin. That was a huge success with the newcomers (and their offspring) strengthening the country –  Priti Patel herself is the most famous example of the influx. The parallel, I’m sure, will not be lost on her.  Patel and Dominic Raab, also the son of a refugee, have both been very strong in welcoming the Hong Kong Chinese. We have, the Ukrainians, another clear contender for immediate and unconditional help.`

When Merkel made her “we can do this!” offer to those coming across the Mediterranean it ended in disaster, empowering people smugglers and introducing complicated issues of how you integrate people from very different cultures and far-lower levels of skills and education. The case for helping Ukraine is more simple. The wave of Polish immigration has been a stunning success: there’s no reason to believe that Ukrainian migrants would be any less successful.

This need not be complicated. Ukrainians should be allowed to stay here for a year or two at first, longer if needed, until such times as it’s safe to return to Ukraine. The last twenty years have shown just how well Britain can handle migration: we have the apparatus, the economic need and (through Putin’s atrocities) the moral imperative. With 140,000 Ukrainians already on the move, according to the UN, the need is certainly there. And Britain has a powerful opportunity to be a friend in need.

War in Ukraine has divided Putin’s court

It is striking how little enthusiasm there is in Russia for Vladimir Putin’s war in Ukraine – but for some, it has become an opportunity to steal a march and curry favour with the boss.

Thousands of Russians have been out on the streets protesting against the conflict, despite the heavy-handed and unstinting response of the security forces. Journalists and experts, sports stars and cultural icons have been making their opposition clear as well. Even those within the system, including senior diplomats and businesspeople, aren’t trying to hide how far they were blindsided by Putin’s decision to invade, and how little they appreciated it.

After all, even at Monday’s fateful televised meeting of the Security Council, Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin tried – in vain – to draw an obviously bored and impatient Putin’s attention to the country’s economic situation, while Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov tried – also in vain – to wriggle out of giving a straight answer on whether he approved of the president’s approach. Prosecutor General Igor Krasnov’s speech was cut from the broadcast altogether, leaving us to guess whether it was because he was too horrifyingly hawkish (unlikely) or too lukewarm on the president’s plan (not that much more likely).

However, even at that meeting it became clear that there were others like Dmitri Medvedev, the largely powerless deputy chair of the Security Council, and Valentina Matvienko, speaker of the Senate, who were desperate to signal their loyalty with passionate endorsements of Putin’s plan. Interior Minister Vladimir Kolokoltsev and National Guard commander Viktor Zolotov competed to call for more action, competitors in the cannibalistic world of Russian security politics.

That was when the official line was that Russia was just recognising the rebel ‘people’s republics’. Now it’s war the stakes are higher – and the spectacle of commentators body-swerving to adapt to the new line is an unedifying one.

The usual array of toxic evening TV news discussion show hosts are in predictable overdrive. Dmitri Kiselev, one of the most venomous, took issue with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz for daring to criticise the invasion, accusing him of ‘solidarity with the genocide of today.’

However, while the bulk of the press (most of it state-controlled or state-adjacent) has been loyally following the official line, even here there is some hesitation. In part, this is because it is hard to push a narrative of glorious victories won to save the Ukrainian people from their neo-Nazi American puppet government – which they assure their viewers and readers the current conflict is – without tales of victory, heart-warming human stories and much real reporting from the front.

That no doubt will come, as the propaganda machine starts to manufacture the right stories and footage, but on the media front, just as on the battlefield, the Kremlin is looking less sure-footed and effective than many anticipated.

It is also quite noteworthy that the commentators and pundits roped in to write the appropriately vainglorious op eds definitely seem to be drawn from the second division.

Heavyweights like Fyodor Lukyanov of the Council on Foreign and Defence Policy and Sergei Karaganov, dean of the School of International Economics and Foreign Affairs at the Higher School of Economics have been strikingly quiet.

Yet for others this is their chance to shine. None more so that Ramzan Kadyrov, warlord of Chechnya. Having called himself ‘Putin’s infantryman,’ he has leapt at the opportunity to snatch some martial glory and undermine his many enemies in Moscow, by sending in thousands of his ‘Kadyrovtsy’, as the ferocious Chechen security forces are known. Never one to miss a social media opportunity, Kadyrov even posted a small video of his soldiers hoisting the Chechen flag in Ukraine.

Putin’s Russia is something of an ‘adhocracy’ in which ambitious opportunists seek to win power and fortune by pleasing Putin, so where Kadyrov leads, others will in due course follow. Not necessary into the fight – although there are claims that businessman Yevgeny Prigozhin’s Wagner Group mercenaries have joined the fray – but as cheerleaders and apologists.

It will be an interesting test of the mood and confidence of the Russian elite, of whether they think Putin’s war is going to be a success, and if they think it is wisest to make a fuss in support, or just wait and see.

Hungary is standing by the EU on Ukraine

Thursday marked the beginning of a new era in European politics. Nowhere has Russia’s invasion of Ukraine been met with greater fear and trepidation than in central and eastern Europe, a region all too familiar with ‘brotherly help’ in the form of military occupation by a looming eastern power.

It may be a new era for Europe, but some things never change. In Hungary, which shares an 80-mile border with Ukraine, a tense atmosphere is laced with disbelief at the West’s ongoing portrayal of the country as a dubious ally threatening to sink EU sanctions.

It’s become a cliché of western analyses that Hungary is constantly looking to throw a spanner in the works of a joint EU response. After Russia formally recognised the Donetsk and Luhansk regions as independent states on Monday, baseless rumours circulated that Hungary was considering vetoing the EU’s sanctions package. The Fidesz government hasn’t made any suggestions that this was or ever could be the case; but that didn’t stop a number of influential correspondents propagating the claim.

Hungarian politicians I have met in recent days could not have been clearer about their commitment to a joint EU and Nato response. This is hardly surprising given the country’s history of oppression at the hands of Russia as a Soviet satellite state in the twentieth century. As such, Fidesz leaders are baffled at moves to sow division by casting aspersions on the party’s reliability as a European ally.

‘Our strategic goal is to keep the EU united. We should find a joint answer,’ said Balázs Orbán, Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s personal political director, when I met him in Budapest on Thursday afternoon. ‘This was always Hungary’s strategy, but we have been portrayed in a different way by the liberal international media.’

Asked if there are any circumstances in which Hungary – which depends almost entirely on Russia for its natural gas supply – would oppose EU sanctions, Orbán replied that ‘right now, we don’t see any red lines.’ On Saturday, foreign minister Péter Szijjártó debunked rumours that Hungary is opposed to cutting Russia out of the Swift banking system, saying ‘this is not true. We have not spoken out against or blocked any sanctions proposal.’

It’s true that Viktor Orbán has previously advocated a ‘Hungarian way’ balancing EU and Nato membership with pragmatic business relations with Moscow – and that Fidesz believes a lack of similar pragmatism from the West has played a part in bringing about the current conflict.

‘The opposite strategy has led to a war, in which Nato forces and western powers don’t have the tools to do something serious. I think the other way is a dead-end street. Energy cooperation is important, for example, because it’s in the interests of the Hungarian people. Stopping energy cooperation with Russia in the long term is just not an option,’ said Orbán. Perhaps some red lines exist after all, then.

Fidesz has long argued that sanctions against Russia don’t work and that they have, in fact, been counterproductive because of the damage they cause to the European economy. In this context, it’s obvious that the Hungarian government has agreed to an EU sanctions package in which it does not really believe. ‘Nobody wants to go to war with Russia – so what’s the alternative? Sanctions,’ says Orbán.

But far from a sign of pro-Russian sentiment, it could be argued that Hungary’s willingness to sign up to sanctions now which it has long opposed is the clearest possible indication of its commitment to a shared western response. The government is supporting the EU’s measures despite believing that they haven’t worked before, that they won’t work now, and that they will cause Europe more harm than good. ‘This is still true, but we’ll still support them,’ Balázs Orbán told me.

This isn’t the only area in which Fidesz is showing itself ready to put aside doubts for the sake of EU unity. The country’s complete refusal to cooperate during the 2015 Syrian refugee crisis led many to suspect that the country would have similar problems accepting a probable wave of Ukrainian refugees. Yet various government figures have told me in no uncertain terms that Hungary will accept any refugees who flee Ukraine for Hungary. Balázs Orbán showed no hesitation on the matter, saying that ‘we are a neighbouring country; we have to do our duty.’

This commitment to accepting Ukrainian refugees no matter their heritage comes amid a long-running struggle with the Ukrainian authorities over the plight of Ukraine’s large ethnic Hungarian minority population. Fidesz believes the West has been naïve about the Ukrainian government’s treatment of minority groups in the country – including Hungarians and ethnic Russians – for years; but Hungary is now putting this historical bad blood aside.

There’s no denying that in supporting sanctions against Russia, and in declaring an openness to refugees fleeing war-torn Ukraine, the Hungarian government is going against its natural political instincts. But this only makes its commitment to western unity all the more telling. The country’s cultural rifts with the EU remain unchanged; but in standing up to Russian aggression – something about which Hungary knows more than most – there should be little doubt where the country’s loyalties truly lie.

Why Germany’s decision to cut Russian banks from Swift matters

‘The Russian invasion marks a turning point,’ said Olaf Scholz on Saturday as he announced that Germany would break its long-standing principle of not sending arms into conflict zones by delivering 1,000 anti-tank weapons and 500 Stinger missiles to Ukraine. ‘It is our duty to support Ukraine to the best of our ability,’ he explained.

With the halting of Nord Stream 2 and the offer of weapons, Berlin had already moved remarkably far out of its foreign policy comfort zone. Now it has gone a step further and agreed to exclude ‘selected Russian banks’ from the global payments system, Swift. It is not yet clear which banks will be targeted, which may affect the effectiveness of the sanctions.

Russia’s exclusion from Swift has been discussed for some time. The banking system acts as the world’s main financial artery, connecting 11,000 financial institutions in 200 countries. Cutting Russia out of the loop will hamper cash flow in and out of the country, limiting Putin’s ability to finance a drawn-out conflict in eastern Europe.

Many countries have argued for this drastic move, which has often been described as the ‘nuclear option’ of economic sanctions, and for good reason. In 2020, Russia’s exports were worth $332 billion and its imports $240 billion. Excluding Russia from Swift makes these transfers much more difficult. Chancellor Scholz had said repeatedly that he felt this severe option ‘must be reserved for a situation when it becomes necessary to step up things.’

This was not an easy decision for the German government to make. Germany is still dependent on Russian energy, with the country continuing to import over half of its gas and over 40 per cent of its oil from Russia. If Germany can no longer pay its energy bills through Swift, Russian companies are unlikely to carry on delivering. (Germany took the important step of halting the accreditation of Nord Stream 2, but the pipeline had not begun to operate, so the move has not made an immediate difference to German dependency.)

Germany’s exports to Russia also grew by 15.4 per cent last year – made up mainly of machinery, cars and chemicals – making Russia the country’s fifth most important export destination. Many smaller companies in Germany depend on this trade and will struggle if that cash flow is impeded.

A continuous source of resistance to harsher sanctions has come from the stubborn camp of Putin apologists in Berlin. Rolf Mützenich, chairman of the Social Democratic Party’s parliamentary group, for example, does not see closer cooperation within Nato as the answer to the crisis. That, he said, would require working with the US where ‘a return of Donald Trump or something similar cannot be entirely ruled out.’ Meanwhile, Ukraine’s ambassador in Berlin, Andriy Melnyk, was reportedly told by a German minister that ‘Ukrainians have only a few hours left. There is no point in helping you now.’

Russia’s exclusion from Swift could also have unintended side effects. Moscow knew it was on the table, not least because the idea had already been floated after the invasion of Crimea in 2014. Moscow has therefore built an alternative financial network called the System for Transfer of Financial Messages (SPFS). This already covers 400 financial institutions and around one fifth of Russia’s international transactions. It is also connected with China’s international banking system, the Cross-Border Interbank Payment System (CIPS). These systems may not rival Swift just yet, but they will likely mitigate the impact of exclusion and now receive further investment.

Despite the economic, political and diplomatic consequences, it is important that Germany has agreed to at least a partial exclusion of Russia from Swift. Right now, the impact of individual sanctions is almost beside the point. The West must do everything in its power to convince Putin, his inner circle and the wider Russian population that it means business. The scales need to tip against further Russian incursions into European territory. Everything added to the existing sanctions will help do that.

If, on the other hand, Putin decides that the West has shied away from severe economic consequences, he will conclude that the same applies to a military response. And if that happens, then there is no real deterrent to him moving further than Ukraine. Putin may try his luck in Nato territory in an effort to rebuild a sphere of influence in eastern Europe.

The value of the Swift exclusion lies not least in its psychological impact. For geopolitical reasons alone, Germany is a key player in this conflict, and it has just come much closer to showing that it is prepared to defend Europe. As the adage goes: ‘if you want peace, prepare for war.’ That applies to all battlefields, including economic ones. Collectively, the West must convince Putin that we will do what it takes, even if it comes at a high cost.

The end of the post-Cold War era

Russia’s invasion is not just an effort to retake what was once part of the Soviet Union. It is a push to use military force to overturn the post-Cold War settlement. In fact, the invasion cannot be understood without first understanding what that settlement looked like and why Russia wants to overturn it, despite the high costs.

In the 1980s, when Vladimir Putin was a KGB agent in East Germany, the Soviet Union had become an arteriosclerotic state. It was unable to keep up with the US in high-technology arms, unable to legitimate its rule with Marxist-Leninist ideology, and unable to afford the cost of maintaining its empire in Eastern Europe.

When its subordinate partners in Eastern Europe sporadically faced uprisings, Moscow had always sent in troops to restore their puppet regimes. Under Mikhail Gorbachev, the Kremlin decided it could no longer afford to send in the Red Army. That decision meant the revolts in Eastern Europe succeeded, the communist regimes were toppled, and the Soviet Union no longer dominated its neighbours. Two years later, the Soviet Union itself collapsed. Region after region within the USSR peeled away and declared its independent statehood. Crucially for today’s politics, that meant independence for territories that had once been fully incorporated in the USSR: Ukraine, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Georgia, Belarus, Moldova, and the ‘stans’ in Central Asia.

Some of these new states maintained close relations with Moscow. Others veered toward the West, culturally, economically, and militarily. East Germany was merged into West Germany and the combined state remained within Nato. The western alliance also extended its reach further east. That included Poland, once a member of the Warsaw Pact, and the Baltic States, which the Soviet Union seized after Stalin’s secret pact with Hitler. For these states, Nato membership was both a symbol of westernisation and a security guarantee, with the vital provision that an attack on one Nato member was an attack on all.

Nato’s expansion under the Clinton administration was less a well-thought-out strategy than a low-cost effort to bring democratising states into the transatlantic world order. It was considered nearly costless because no one believed Russia was still a security threat or would consider Nato’s expansion threatening. The European Union was simultaneously extending membership to the same countries. In short, the West and the US-led world order was expanding geographically, not by force but by invitation.

Russia was never included in that expansion, though it might have been considered later if it had democratised, transformed its economy, and demonstrated peaceful intentions toward its neighbours. Instead, Russia was offered a cooperative arrangement with Nato but never considered for full membership. Moscow later claimed that the George H.W. Bush administration had privately agreed that Nato would never expand eastward. Not one inch. The Bush administration denies it. In any case, the issue was never discussed between President Bush and his Russian counterparts or embodied in any written agreement, formal or informal, as you would expect of such a major undertaking. Later, Russia would claim Nato’s expansion was both a betrayal and threat. Nor was Russia offered membership in the EU, which would have required successful democratisation, as well as a thorough-going transformation of its economy.

Nato and the EU posed a threat to Russia, but not a military one. The principal threat was that thriving, prosperous democracies on Russia’s doorstep were a standing rebuke to its own failures. That rebuke undermined the Russian regime’s legitimacy and, potentially, its stability.

The dual failure of Russia’s efforts to democratise and modernise its economy left the Kremlin with major problems. To legitimate its rule, the post-Soviet regime has relied on traditional Russian nationalism. Putin seized that rationale and fuelled it with his seething anger over his country’s loss of territory and Great Power status. Russia, as he saw it, was a great nation humiliated by the West. And he wanted to end that disgrace and restore Russia to its rightful place. (China’s communist regime has an almost-identical view of its past and future.)

Beyond its borders, Putin’s Russia lacks soft power: the power of attraction. That was clearest in 2014, when Ukraine felt the lure of the European Union. Moscow responded by coercing Ukraine’s government to drop its plans for closer ties with the EU. Ukraine’s ruler, Viktor Yanukovych, was close to Moscow and bowed immediately to those demands. His new plans dropped the EU and proposed closer ties with Russia instead. Almost immediately, the Ukrainian people rose up in the Maidan Revolution of February 2014 and forced Yanukovych to flee for his life. The successor government was democratic, pro-western, and corrupt.

Since Maidan, Putin has been trying to reassert Russian dominance over Ukraine. Without a puppet government or soft power, his only tool was the military. He wasn’t reluctant to use that tool. His army seized Crimea in 2014 and used unmarked forces to control parts of two other Ukrainian provinces, Luhansk and Donetsk, which border Russia. There has been bloody fighting in those border regions ever since.

Putin’s immediate aim in the current war was to overwhelm Luhansk and Donetsk with heavy armour and air power and then extend Russian control to the whole provinces, well beyond the portions it already controlled. It will then want to connect those regions with Crimea, giving Russia a land bridge which it currently lacks.

Putin’s larger war aims were unclear until the fighting started. He wanted to seize all Ukraine and control Kiev, its capital of 3 million people. We’ve also learnt just how hard the Ukrainians will fight to maintain their independence.

The Ukrainian military cannot defeat the much larger, better equipped Russian force. Even so, the resistance poses two fundamental problems for Putin. The first is that his forces are likely to suffer heavy casualties in urban fighting. The second is that popular resistance means occupying the country will be difficult and costly. As the US learned in Iraq and both the US and USSR learned in Afghanistan, is that it is far easier for a powerful military to conquer a territory and destroy an existing government than to install a reliable successor government.

A puppet regime in Kiev won’t be able to suppress popular resistance on its own. It will need Russian troops, lots of them, because Ukrainians won’t submit peacefully to Russian control. They can inflict a steady toll of casualties on any occupying force. That means mourning — and angry — Russian families. The question is whether Putin thinks the political price is worth it. That depends on how high the toll is, how unpopular a long war proves, and how tightly he controls the military, which is essential to avoid a coup and crush popular protests.

It is clear now that the Biden administration’s strategy of deterrence failed. So did the diplomatic efforts by Europe’s largest powers. Washington’s backup policy is an incremental increase in sanctions, ratcheting up each time Putin extends the war. Biden applied the second tranche on Thursday, withholding the most serious banking sanctions and saying we had to wait weeks to know if they worked. This strategy failed, too.

As the Russians began shelling cities, and the scale of the invasion became clear, even the most reluctant policymakers in Washington, Paris, and Berlin decided to impose far harsher sanctions, far more quickly. On Saturday, they announced the biggest one: Russian banks can no longer use the Swift system of inter-bank communications. Without it, they are essentially excluded from international trade since Russian businesses cannot easily make bank transactions.

China is watching these sanctions. Beijing surely saw how reluctant the Europeans were, for fear of the inevitable harm sanctions would do to their own economies. That ‘self-harm’ would be far more extensive if they severed trade with China, should it attack Taiwan.

The failure to deter Russia in Ukraine will certainly lead to recriminations in the US. Republicans and some Democrats will want to know why we didn’t send a lot more small arms and anti-tank missiles to Ukraine. Why didn’t we give them anti-aircraft weapons or anti-ship weapons as well?

Energy prices will be another open wound in the US and Europe. Prices were already sky high. Part of the problem lies in Biden’s green energy regulations and his restrictions on drilling and pipelines. His administration also vetoed a joint effort by Israel, Greece, and Cyprus to supply Mediterranean gas to Europe.

Biden has shown no willingness to change these environmental policies, which would mean confronting a vital wing of the Democratic party. He seems to think it is less politically costly to impose pain on ordinary consumers than it is to cut the green commitments. Will that continue? And how will he respond to European countries that relied on Russian energy that now need substitutes from America and the Middle East? America can supply much of that demand but only if its energy producers are unleashed.

Beyond these immediate problems lies an even bigger one. Putin’s military aggression plus China’s rise form a concerted effort to reshape the global order, not at the margins but at the core. The US is gradually recognising that its grand hopes for China have failed. The hope when America let the People’s Republic into the world trading system was that growing prosperity would encourage China’s peaceful, democratic rise. They didn’t. They solidified an authoritarian communist government, which plays by its own trade rules, systematically steals western intellectual property, uses its wealth to fund an ambitious military build-up, tries to assert unilateral control over the South China Sea, and regularly threatens Taiwan. The more China and Russia have confronted western opposition, the more they have been drawn together. Now, they are challenging the western-led global order. And the Ukraine invasion shows they are willing to use force to do it.

If the US is to maintain the tottering liberal order, which has sustained peace and prosperity for decades, it needs willing partners in Europe and Asia — and it needs to increase its own military budget. Nato’s largest economies, which have spent years free-riding, will have to decide if they want to up their defence spending significantly to deal with Russian aggression. If they are unwilling to make those sacrifices, they can hardly expect Americans to do it for them.

The future of world order hinges on those decisions.