Russia

Wednesday

Andrew Tettenborn

The Putin apologists of the European parliament

Never underestimate Vladimir Putin, and certainly never underestimate his advisers. Well before the first Russian rockets exploded in metropolitan Kiev, he had achieved a major foreign policy success by sabotaging the EU’s ability to present a united front against him. Ever since the days of Gerhard Schroeder, Russia had deftly weaponised German politicians’ commitment to Ostpolitik and German people’s desire for a comfortable bourgeois life, and this undoubtedly paid off. Before the invasion the EU’s paymaster was less than enthusiastic about sanctions when reminded of the sunk costs of Nord Stream 2 and its short-sighted but temporarily lucrative decision to depend both on Russian gas and the profits it made

Tuesday

Annabel Denham

Britain is paying the price for its fracking panic

Between 1980 and 2005, the UK produced more energy than it needed. Today, we import more than a third of our energy and over half of our natural gas. Households are facing an increase in their annual tax bills from £1,500 to an eye-watering £3,000. While the Business Secretary may have tweeted this week that the current situation is a matter of high prices rather than security of supply, families already struggling to heat their homes are unlikely to tell the difference as they decide whether to heat their homes or pay for food. This was never a foregone conclusion. A decade ago, the US shale gas revolution was well

Steerpike Steerpike

Will grandees return their Russian honours?

It’s five days since Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine and there’s no sign of the pressure letting up. Arms continue to be exported across Europe to aid Kiev’s war effort while financial penalties continue to be applied. The latest sanctions levied against Russian banks include cutting them off from Visa and Mastercard, and consequently Apple Pay and Google Pay.   But it’s not just in the military, diplomatic and economic spheres that Moscow is being targeted. Cultural boycotts threaten to wreck Russia’s aspirations of World Cup glory in Qatar this summer while Eurovision has also announced the country will not be welcome. One act of individual defiance is the return of honours given by Putin’s state to notable

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Boris rules out a no-fly zone over Ukraine

What can the UK do to ensure that Vladimir Putin fails in Ukraine? The Prime Minister has just given a press conference in Poland with his counterpart Mateusz Morawiecki where he repeated his assertion that ‘Putin will fail’ and that the West ‘will succeed in protecting and preserving a sovereign, independent and democratic Ukraine’. The Russian president, he said, had underestimated the resolve of Ukraine and its allies. He also warned that things were likely to get much worse, saying:  Johnson was confronted by a campaigner who accused him of being afraid ‘It is clear that Vladimir Putin is prepared to use barbaric and indiscriminate tactics against innocent civilians to

Joseph S. Nye, Jr.

Has Putin’s invasion changed the world order?

Is Russia’s invasion of Ukraine ‘a turning point in history’? Does it spell the end of the American era, and the beginning of a new Cold War between the West and a Russo-Chinese axis of authoritarians? Some invoke the image of 1939. After assuring the world that he was interested only in protecting his fellow Germans in the Sudetenland, Adolf Hitler annexed the rest of Czechoslovakia and then invaded Poland, setting off world war two. Are the Russians in the Donbass the modern equivalents of the Sudeten Germans? Where will Putin stop? Others draw an analogy to 1948 and Stalin’s drawing of an Iron Curtain across Eastern Europe, followed by

Monday

Isabel Hardman

Liz Truss is having a good war

Liz Truss gave a striking statement in the Commons this afternoon on the action the government was taking to respond to the Russian invasion of Ukraine. It contrasted to the approach taken by some of her colleagues, because it contained a number of admissions about the impact of this action. For the first time, the Foreign Secretary stated that Britain would ‘have to undergo some economic hardship as a result of our sanctions’. This has been implicit over the past few days, but Truss was the first to say it clearly. She added that ‘our hardships are nothing compared to those endured by the people of Ukraine’, and also warned

James Forsyth James Forsyth

‘Staying Switzerland’ on Ukraine is impossible

The striking thing about the financial sanctions on Russia is not their severity, but just how many countries are joining in the effort. Switzerland has today announced that it will adopt the EU sanctions on Russia, particularly significant because it has been the biggest recipient of private transfers by Russians in recent years. The fact that such a traditionally neutral country is imposing sanctions will deepen the wedge between Putin and the rest of the ruling elite. Meanwhile in Asia, Japan, South Korea and Singapore have signed on to the economic measures on Russia. Their willingness to do this is as much about Taiwan as Ukraine; they know that China is

Thomas Lorman

Viktor Orbán has played a perfect game with Putin

On 3 April Hungarians will have their ninth set of free parliamentary elections since the collapse of the communist dictatorship in 1989. The winner is likely to be Viktor Orbán and his Fidesz-KDNP coalition, which is leading in five of the six major polls. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine will not change that dynamic even though the opposition leader, Péter Márki-Zay has called Orbán a ‘traitor’ for his long-standing friendship with Vladimir Putin. Ever since Viktor Orbán began his second stint as Hungary’s prime minister in 2010, he has repeatedly played the provocateur within the EU, tweaking the eurocrats’ noses with his cultural conservatism and hostility to mass immigration. His alliance

James Kirkup James Kirkup

Will Britain welcome Ukrainian refugees?

Immigration used to be the most-discussed issue in British politics. It gets less attention these days, for reasons too varied to go into here. But even though some voters have been focused on other things, there have been significant changes. Some have been good. Others bad. And the bad ones are about to collide with the Ukrainian crisis. The positive bits of the immigration story have mainly been around regulated, economically-driven migration. Britain’s post-EU migration regime is, well, not as bad as it could have been. It’s not as easy as it was for EU nationals to come here to work, but it’s a bit easier for non-EU nationals to

Katja Hoyer Katja Hoyer

Germany has rejected Merkel’s military legacy

‘We are witnessing a turning point… the world is not the same anymore,’ said German Chancellor Olaf Scholz yesterday in a speech that will be remembered as the country’s biggest military shift since 1945. Staring down the barrel of Putin’s gun, Scholz announced a massive and immediate cash injection for Germany’s armed forces as well as a long-term commitment to higher defence spending. Russia’s unprovoked attack on Ukraine has pulled Germany out of decades of complacency and misguided pacifism. Foreign minister Annalena Baerbock seemed genuinely shocked at the discrepancy between Putin’s words during her visit to Moscow last month and his actions in Ukraine. She has said she feels betrayed:

Sam Leith Sam Leith

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

Sunday

Mark Galeotti

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

Charles Lipson

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

Saturday

James Forsyth

A new Europe is emerging from this crisis

With every hour that Kiev holds out, the geopolitics of Europe changes more. Germany, which so values its prohibition on sending weapons into warzones, has just announced that it is sending 1,000 anti-tank weapons and 500 Stinger missiles to support the Ukrainian forces. I expect that defence spending will rise considerably in the coming years Germany is also allowing other Nato members to export arms with German-made parts to Ukraine — which will make a material difference to the supplies that the Ukrainian government receives. Yesterday evening, it was announced that Russian banks are going to be cut off from Swift. The EU seems to have realised how unsustainable their position was when

Ian Williams Ian Williams

China is tying itself in knots over Ukraine

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

Jacob Heilbrunn

It’s time for Germany to stand up to Russia

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

Friday

Mary Dejevsky

Are Russians turning against Putin?

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

James Forsyth James Forsyth

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

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

Kate Andrews Kate Andrews

Is Britain prepared for the cost of sanctions?

Sanctions hit both sides: this is a point that Joe Biden has made to Americans and Olaf Scholz is making to Germans. But Boris Johnson is not (so far) talking about the economic implications of this war. They will be — and in fact, already are — profound.  When Russian tanks moved into Ukraine, the price of gas for next-day delivery in the UK shot up 40 per cent. A study by Investec yesterday suggested this means typical household energy bills — already expected to approach £2,000 in April — could end up closer to £3,000. Quite a hit for a country already facing a cost-of-living crisis. And this is just

Ross Clark Ross Clark

Will the West shut Russia out of Swift?

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