Ukraine

Friday

Stephen Arnell

Refugees in film: a cinematic guide

The tragic ongoing events in Ukraine have highlighted the plight of refugees, with over 2m people (mainly women and children) fleeing the country since Russia invaded on 24 February 2022. Sadly, refugee crises have been occurring since the dawn of what may ironically be called ‘civilisation’, most notably the Biblical Exodus from Egypt and Caesar’s conquest of Gaul, which began when the Swiss Helvetii confederation, under pressure of Germanic tribes, sought to cross into Roman territory on their westward journey to safety. Movies concerning refugees range from the past (Exodus: Gods & Kings) to the dystopian future (Children of Men) and are international in scope, including the UK (Limbo), Bosnia and Herzegovina

Justin Doherty

Why taking cold showers could help Ukraine

I found myself in Berlin at the weekend gasping for breath in a cold shower, doing my bit for Ukraine. Berliners are a phlegmatic bunch but the arrival of a European war two hours from their doorstep is triggering memories of much darker periods of conflict and stirring not-so-dormant feelings of solidarity and direct action. Could cold showers be the answer? Last week the German government undid decades of foreign policy, announcing massive investment in German defence spending and sending anti-tank and air defence weapons to Ukraine. Chancellor Olaf Scholz called Putin’s invasion a Zeitenwende, a ‘watershed moment’ as he pledged €100 billion to upgrade German’s defence forces and committed

Thursday

Paul Wood

Chernobyl Two?

The electricity supply to the ruined nuclear plant at Chernobyl in Ukraine has been cut off. According to one knowledgeable source I spoke to, this is a serious problem as power is needed to pump water around spent nuclear fuel rods stored there. There is a back-up diesel generator, but it has just one day’s supply of fuel left and once that runs out, the temperature could start to climb. If the water evaporates, the zirconium metal ‘fuel assemblies’ could start to melt – with radioactive material released into the atmosphere. This would not be anywhere near as bad as the original Chernobyl disaster, in 1986, when a reactor had

Roger Kimball

Kamala invades Poland

You can tell that the Biden administration is getting serious. They have unleashed their ultimate weapon, cackle diplomacy. The warhead is nicknamed Harris, and it is now in Poland cackling away, endeavouring to assemble the high-level Pierogis before Russia flattens Kiev or Putin decides to go nuclear – and by ‘go nuclear’, alas, I mean ‘go nuclear’. Some observers say that sending Kamala Harris on this mission will give her a chance to ‘burnish’ her foreign policy credentials. Cynical folks – and I would include myself in that group – think it is just another emission of fog by America’s first certifiably senile administration. It is just another emission of fog

Theo Hobson Theo Hobson

Dostovesky and Putin’s useful idiots

When I was 17 I heard the name Dostovesky, and was enthralled. Just the name felt so glamorously intellectual, so deep. I began to read some of his novels, and my hunch was vindicated. A bit later I delved into his ideas, and my admiration became more nuanced. I partly admired his defiance of the rational humanist arrogance of the West, but I was also wary of his reactionary mystical nationalism, his faith in the anti-liberal Russian soul.  It seems that a lot of religiously minded intellectuals struggle to get past stage one. They are so taken with the flinty glamour of this writer that their critical faculties atrophy. They

James W. Carden

This is what liberal war fever looks like

In a private letter written in 1918, the recently deposed German chancellor Theobald von Bethmann-Hollweg admitted that in the run-up to the Great War, ‘there were special circumstances that militated in favour of war, including those in which Germany in 1870-71 entered the circle of great powers’ and became ‘the object of vengeful envy on the part of the other Great Powers, largely though not entirely by her own fault’. Yet Bethmann saw another crucial factor at work: that of public opinion.’How else,’ he asked,'[to] explain the senseless and impassioned zeal which allowed countries like Italy, Rumania, and even America, not originally involved in the war, no rest until they too

Mary Dejevsky

What’s behind Russia’s new Z symbol?

National symbols are usually proudly emblazoned for all to see. That’s the point of them. One, though, seems rather to have crept up on us in recent weeks, being flashed almost like a secret tattoo and then quickly covered up again. It is the letter ‘Z’ that Russians have started using to denote national solidarity and support for their country in the war in Ukraine. The Z came to international notice when a Russian gymnast, Ivan Kuliak, displayed it prominently on his strip two weeks ago while standing next to a Ukrainian competitor at a tournament in Qatar. He now faces a disciplinary inquiry as under the rules such symbols must not

Henry Hill

Is it time to break up the Home Office?

When was the last time the Home Office produced some good news? Even in the middle of a crisis that most will concede the government has handled quite well, the department has managed to generate the usual abysmal headlines. Even the Foreign Office, slow as it was in cracking down on Russian oligarchs, couldn’t steal the limelight. There may perhaps be a narrow defence to be made over particular policies. Sources in the department point out that the Ukrainian government would prefer refugees to remain in neighbouring countries than come all the way to Britain. But take a step back and such arguments start to look ridiculous. Britain wouldn’t have

Rod Liddle Rod Liddle

Is global warming really more dangerous than Putin’s nuclear threats?

Having just dusted down my Geiger counter and argued with the family about whether or not there is room for our dog, Jessie, in the cellar fallout shelter, I thought I would check in with the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists to see how long we’ve got before our recently acquired small paddock sprouts its first crop of Cobalt-60. The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists was begun in 1945 by the physicists who, having devoted several years of their lives to the Manhattan Project, suddenly realised that their striving might not be, in the end, exclusively beneficial for the human race. As the most lionised of them, J. Robert Oppenheimer,

Lionel Barber

What if Putin hasn’t miscalculated – but the West has?

Conventional wisdom dictates that Vladimir Putin has ‘miscalculated’ in his invasion of Ukraine. His blitzkrieg has been poorly executed. He has reinvigorated the Nato alliance and the EU and triggered heavy sanctions. And he has lost the ‘information war’ to Volodymyr Zelensky, the TV comedian turned global hero. But what if the West has ‘miscalculated’ in reading Putin’s intentions? What if the West’s sanctions, along with intensified military aid to Ukraine and a courageous local resistance, encourage Putin to double down? What if he decides to use a weapon of last resort, a nuclear, chemical or biological weapon, even at the risk of World War 3? At Emmanuel Macron’s latest

Kate Andrews and Max Jeffery

Border farce: Britain is failing Ukraine’s refugees

 Calais, France ‘The British government is not turning anybody around,’ Priti Patel told her French counterpart last weekend. ‘Ukrainian refugees are welcome in the UK.’ She doubled down on her claims in the House of Commons on Monday: ‘It is wrong to say that we are just turning people back; we are absolutely not.’ You don’t have to spend long in Calais to disprove the Home Secretary’s claims. As we checked into our hotel at 1.30 a.m. on Tuesday, we saw seven Ukrainian refugees resting on the couches in the lobby. There was nothing eye-catching about the group, apart from their obvious weariness and the pile of Ukrainian passports and

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

Douglas Murray

Why C.S. Lewis was right about war

Well, at least Covid is over. No sooner had Vladimir Putin’s tanks rolled into Ukraine than the UK’s Covid advisory group Sage disbanded. The same effect was felt in the US, where the outbreak of war in Europe led to the immediate, unlamented disappearance of Dr Anthony Fauci. After two years on primetime, suddenly the good doctor was nowhere to be seen. Covid already seems so very last season. The ‘climate emergency’ likewise seems to have drifted away. For years, whenever the world was facing no more proximate emergency, every politician from the Scottish parliament upwards insisted that we were all doomed and heading to hellfire. Such thinking captured most

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

Aleks Szczerbiak

The war is redefining Poland’s place in the world

The Polish government has for years been something of a pariah on the liberal international stage. Poland’s ruling Law and Justice party, which is firmly on the political right, is at odds with the EU establishment, particularly over its judicial reforms, which critics say will threaten the key democratic principle of separation of constitutional powers. The EU accuses Poland of undermining the ‘rule of law’ and the European Commission is, as a result, withholding the billions of euros that Poland is due from the Union’s coronavirus recovery fund. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine could transform all that. The war raises some almighty diplomatic, economic, security and humanitarian challenges for Poland as

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

Robert Peston

Is Boris in denial about the looming economic crisis?

The priority for the UK and other rich democracies is to protect the people of Ukraine from the depredations of Putin’s forces. A close second should be protecting the poorest people in our countries and vital public services from the cancerous impact of soaring inflation, made much worse by the West’s economic warfare against Putin’s Russia. The most basic costs of living are soaring. And that means a devastating recession that has already begun for all those but the richest. This blow to living standards will be the worst in living memory, more pernicious than the impact of either the banking crisis or Covid. Talking to ministers and MPs, it is