Russia

Thursday

Owen Matthews

My one-way ticket out of Moscow

Things fall apart. Moscow friends call to say that I have to urgently send my 19-year-old son out of Russia. He is travelling on his Russian passport and a new law says that he is obliged to register for the military draft. Nikita is on a gap year working at a Moscow theatre and he begs not to be sent away. I dismiss the warnings. A day later, a friend’s nanny shows up at our door and hands me an inch-thick packet of high-denomination euros to take out of the country for her employer. The money’s owner is already en route to Israel on a private jet. I overrule my

Martin Vander Weyer Martin Vander Weyer

Is fracking the answer to the energy crisis?

I’ll approach the hot topic of a ban on Russian oil by way of personal anecdote: I’ve never been a soldier or a spook but I have twice found myself ensconced in secure Nato conference rooms. The first occasion was a group visit to the military alliance’s Brussels headquarters 42 years ago, when an unsmiling American defence expert introduced us to the concept of ‘Mutually Assured Destruction’ – whose acronym was the key to the tense but relatively stable Cold War stand-off. In simple terms, it would have been utter madness for either side to fire the first nuclear missile. The odds on that happening by Kremlin order or error

Mary Wakefield Mary Wakefield

The myth that Russia and Ukraine are fighting over

It seems strange now that any of us ever imagined that Putin might not invade. He thinks of Ukraine as rightfully Russia’s, heart, mind and soul. It’s there in that essay he wrote last year: Russians and Ukrainians are ‘one people’, he said, meaning not that they’re brothers so much as that Ukrainians have no right to a separate identity. And I wonder whether, in attempting to take Kiev, he isn’t also trying to lay final claim to the founding myth that Russia and Ukraine fight over and both think of as their own. Kiev is the setting for the epic tale of Kievan Rus, the first great Slavic state

Charles Moore Charles Moore

Putin is bad, not mad

I wish people would not say Vladimir Putin is mad. One understands him much better if one says he is bad. In some ultimate sense, evil is a form of madness because it brings destruction to its perpetrators as well as its victims, but Putin is not mad in the ordinary sense of the word. He knows what he is doing. The value of saying something like ‘He would happily murder every single Ukrainian if it served his purpose’ is not to express one’s anger and disapproval (both of which should be obvious) but to shed light on his attitude of mind. Given that he is such a person and

The Spectator

Which European countries are most reliant on Russian gas?

High commodity Nickel trading was suspended this week after prices rose to over $100,000 per tonne – double its previous peak of $50,000. How do other commodity prices compare with their peaks since the 2008 financial crisis? Previous peak Silver $43 Brent crude $140 Gold $1,853 Aluminium $3,124 Tin $33,015 This week Silver $26 Brent crude $139 Gold $2,050 Aluminium $3,849 Tin $50,025 Short squeeze The extraordinary rise in nickel prices was partly caused by a ‘short squeeze’, where investors try to exploit bets by other traders that prices would decrease. What notable stocks have experienced squeezes – and how much did their prices increase? Year Rise 1923 Piggly Wiggly

The Spectator

Letters: Britain must offer immediate sanctuary to Ukrainians

Unintended consequences Sir: The West has got it wrong when it comes to putting a stranglehold on Vladimir Putin (‘Putin’s rage’, 5 March). Harsh economic sanctions will ultimately punish millions of ordinary Russians, many of whom are poor and probably against the invasion of Ukraine. If the products Russian workers produce do not sell then those workers become unemployed and forced into poverty. That could quickly turn more Russian citizens against the West, strengthening support for Putin rather than weakening it, thus prolonging the occupation and hostilities. So far, the West hasn’t done a great deal regarding this invasion, other than turn the wheels of Putin’s propaganda machine for him.

The Spectator

Portrait of the week: Zelensky channels Churchill, Russia blocks BBC and Bercow banned from parliament

Home President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine addressed a packed House of Commons by video, echoing Winston Churchill by declaring that Ukrainians would fight in the fields and in the streets. He said: ‘Please make sure that our Ukrainian skies are safe.’ Wearing a blue and yellow tie, the Speaker, clearly moved, thanked him. Earlier, Boris Johnson, the Prime Minister, announced a ban on Russian oil imports in the coming months, but no ban on gas imports. He proposed a six-point plan that included an international humanitarian coalition and maximising economic pressure on Vladimir Putin’s regime in Russia. Mr Johnson also said the government would publish a strategy for producing more

Andrew Roberts

The courage on Ukraine’s front line

Central to the question of whether or not Ukraine can survive as an independent state is that of re-supply, not just of drones and anti-tank weaponry but also of food, especially if the conflict lasts for months or even years. The vast agricultural centre of the country is not being seeded, with potentially catastrophic consequences. Nato governments are providing lethal weapons and other aid, of course, but from what I have just seen in Berehove in western Ukraine there is another very heartening sign. For there is a large underground network of private, non-governmental groups – largely based on Christian groups with long-established family connections – that is transporting huge

Aidan Hartley

Africa’s lessons for Ukraine

Kenya During Russia’s invasion of Georgia in 2008 I got a close look at Moscow’s troops and their kit. These contractniki were a ragged bunch with rotting teeth, bad boots and homemade tattoos, using weapons and vehicles that seemed like hand-me-downs from a failed state in Africa. I had expected them to be much smarter. Recently my spooky friends told me that Putin’s military invading Ukraine was now a modernised, well-trained force. Instead it appears that Moscow’s generals have stolen the diesel, supplied the mechanised brigades with ageing knock-off Chinese tyres and sacked all the dentists. I haven’t visited Luhansk and Donetsk, but I bet they are a version of

Wednesday

Sam Ashworth-Hayes

In defence of mutually assured destruction

The slow return of the 1980s has reached its logical conclusion. The prospect of nuclear annihilation is haunting our nightmares once again. Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine has been marked by a willingness to engage in blatant nuclear sabre-rattling of a sort not seen since the end of the Cold War.  From his statement that anyone ‘interfering from outside’ would ‘face consequences greater than any you have faced in history’ to his placing Russia’s nuclear forces on ‘a special combat duty regime’, Putin’s strategy has been to threaten nuclear war to keep the West out of what he sees as his business. But these threats don’t mean that Putin is about to send

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Why is Britain so useless at helping Ukrainian refugees?

Some MPs were in tears yesterday when President Volodymyr Zelensky addressed the House of Commons, and understandably so, given the soaring rhetoric and bravery of a man who knows his days on earth could be numbered.  One kind interpretation is that the caseworkers at the Home Office haven’t been trained sufficiently for them to use the initiative But across Westminster over the past few days, MPs and their constituency teams have also been crying tears of frustration at the Home Office’s handling of the visa application process. Not only has there been intense confusion between the different arms of government about how many routes there are for refugees – with

Gavin Mortimer Gavin Mortimer

British fighters in Ukraine are brave but misguided

The first British volunteers have arrived in Ukraine to ‘do their bit’ in thwarting the Russian invasion. According to reports in this morning’s newspapers, four serving soldiers are among them. Liz Truss must be heartened. The Foreign Secretary recently declared her support for any idealistic Briton wishing to head east to fight ‘for democracy’. Others were less enthusiastic at the prospect of Britons joining the war, notably Ben Wallace, the Defence Secretary, himself a former soldier. Also unenthused was Admiral Sir Tony Radakin, the chief of the defence staff, who cautioned: ‘This isn’t really something that you want to rush to in terms of the sound of gunfire. This is about

Julius Strauss

Putin is bored

At the beginning of this year, Vladimir Putin was sitting comfortably in the Kremlin: his legacy so far a steady leader who had saved his people from the helter-skelter of robber capitalism in the 1990s and given them a modicum of stability and pride. He must have known that if he waged war on a country of 45 million brother Slavs, he risked losing it all. Liberty and life are now less certain. So why did he do it? Having spent four years in Moscow and more than two decades of Russia-watching, I have never believed that Putin was a chess grandmaster. While his apologists in the West lauded his

Tuesday

Lloyd Evans

Zelensky’s address was strange, but sensational

This afternoon, the Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky addressed the House of Commons. A single flat-screen TV broadcast his speech to a packed chamber. Zelensky appeared in plain green fatigues next to Ukraine’s blue-and-yellow flag. He looked pale, tired, fearless and determined. Squads of foreign killers are roaming his homeland trying to find him. His words were spoken in English by a translator who probably had no advance sight of the text. The halting, ungrammatical phrases made the address strangely powerful. ‘I would like to tell you about the 13 days of war. The war that we did not start.’ Zelensky’s goal is simple. ‘We do not want to lose what

Gabriel Gavin Gabriel Gavin

Could Turkey rejoin the West?

Istanbul, Turkey Wherever you go in Istanbul, Atatürk is rarely far away. Portraits of the man who founded the Turkish Republic hang in the Grand Bazaar and in apartment building foyers. His face is etched on everything from street signs to café mugs. With his vision of Turkey as a liberal, secular state, Atatürk set his nation on the path to western alignment and, ultimately, Nato. When he died in 1938, Winston Churchill said his ‘death is not only a loss for the country, but for Europe is the greatest loss’. Yet in recent years, Turkey’s position as a western ally has all but disintegrated. Nato was forced to apologise

Archie Brown

Putin miscalculated. Let’s not do the same

Only the Russian people can decide how long Putin remains in the Kremlin, but the invasion of Ukraine will likely shorten his reign. In a lengthy interview when he assumed power 22 years ago, Putin answered a question about the forced resignation of German Chancellor Helmut Kohl by saying that ‘after 16 years, any people – including the stable Germans – get tired of a leader’. Russians have been more patient, but they didn’t expect to be led into pariah status. Change could come from within the political elite, many of whom are aware how counterproductive this war is for Russia, and some of whom feel shame for the suffering

Charles Lipson

Russia’s war on Ukraine: the lessons so far

The sheer complexity – and horror – of Russia’s war on Ukraine makes it difficult to distil the essential points. To take only one example, the battlefront north of Kiev, where the Russian convoy is stalled, is significantly different from that along the Black Sea, where Russian forces from Crimea have made substantial progress. A third front, in the east, is consolidating in Russia’s favour, though the fight was much harder and longer than Moscow expected. Amid this complexity, it is important to summarise what we know so far: 1. Vladimir Putin’s decision to invade Ukraine appears to be the most catastrophic strategic mistake since the end of the Cold War and

Mary Dejevsky

How close is Russia to collapse?

Russia is now as closed off to the world as the Soviet Union was before Mikhail Gorbachev made his first tentative steps towards glasnost more than 40 years ago. Pretty much all the progress that post-Soviet Russia had made towards becoming a ‘normal’ country has been reversed within the space of two weeks. Vladimir Putin’s presumed legacy – of stability, predictability and hugely improved living standards for the vast majority of Russians – is vanishing before their eyes. In recent days, Netflix and TikTok have joined what had already become a mass western boycott of Russia. American Express followed Barclaycard and Mastercard in leaving the Russian market. Western supermarkets, including Sainsbury’s, are pulling out;

Monday

Katy Balls

Boris Johnson is operating in a new political reality

Boris Johnson is attempting to carve out a role for himself as the figure who can lead the West in its response to the invasion of Ukraine. Over the weekend, the Prime Minister penned an article for the New York Times – in which he set out his ‘six-point plan’ to defeat Putin. The points are closer to general principles than firm action. They include forming an ‘international humanitarian coalition’ for Ukraine and resisting Russia’s ‘creeping normalisation’ of its actions.  Russia’s decision to launch a full scale invasion of Ukraine has certainly stopped all talk of an imminent confidence vote in the Prime Minister over partygate Today Johnson will attempt to

Sam Leith Sam Leith

Remember the Russians who will really suffer from sanctions

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