Ukraine

Tuesday

Walter Ellis

The BBC’s march to war

Perhaps we are growing war-weary – weary, that is, of the gathering storm of World War One documentaries on the BBC. There have been so many, not just Max Hastings (for) and Niall Ferguson (against), but Jeremy Paxman keeping the home fires burning and the reheated I Was There interviews with veterans of the conflict whom age withered, unlike those who left their corpses to stink in the mud of Flanders. For all that, 37 Days, the corporation’s recent reconstruction of the events leading up to Germany’s invasion of Belgium, was utterly compelling, once again confirming the place of docudrama in the history schedule. Not only was it beautifully realised (Downton

Thursday

The Spectator

Spectator letters: Slavery continues to this day; and why Russia’s re-emergence as a world power is down to Obama’s apathy

Slavery isn’t over Sir: I was alarmed to read Taki’s piece in this week’s High Life (8 March) which claimed that ‘slavery… has been over since 1865, except in Africa’. The Centre for Social Justice, whose board I chair, last year published its groundbreaking report It Happens Here, exposing the desperate plight of those in modern slavery in the UK. The CSJ’s work revealed exploitation taking place across the country, from young British men enslaved on traveller sites and forced into manual labour, to vulnerable children forced to live as slaves behind closed doors in one of Britain’s thousands of cannabis farms, to young British girls being trafficked into sexual

The Spectator

Portrait of the week | 13 March 2014

Home Ed Miliband, the leader of the Labour party, promised that, if elected, his administration would hold a referendum on membership of the European Union only if there was a new transfer of power to Brussels, which he called ‘unlikely’. If Scotland votes for independence, the Royal Bank of Scotland and Lloyds might have to move their legal homes to London under European Union law, the BBC reported. BBC Three is to be closed as an on-air channel, to go online only. The future of BBC Four is also in question. Mark Carney, the governor of the Bank of England, told the Treasury Select Committee that interest rates could reach

David Blackburn

Our own folly may yet lead us to a second dishonourable Yalta

‘He was back after less than two years’ pilgrimage in a Holy Land of illusion in the old ambiguous world, where priests were spies and gallant friends proved traitors and his country was led blundering into dishonour.’ Those words are taken from Officers and Gentlemen, the second volume in Evelyn Waugh’s Sword of Honour, his trilogy about the second world war. The words describe the disillusion of the protagonist, Guy Crouchback, as Britain sides with Soviet Russia to defeat Hitler: an alliance with an atheist tyranny to defeat an atheist tyranny, an alliance that led to the betrayal – perhaps necessary – of Eastern Europe at Yalta. The words resonate

Ian Birrell

Crimean notebook: ‘They’ll have to break all my bones to make me a Russian citizen’

Vladimir Putin still swears that there are no Russian troops in Crimea, so their mission is to say as little as possible as they invade this holiday region in their unmarked uniforms and vehicles. It is remarkable how soon you get used to shouting questions at these heavily armed special forces soldiers while they pretend not to be Russians. They tend not to take the bait: the most you’ll get out of them is a curt ‘Nyet’. I wandered up to an officer who seemed to be in charge of seizing a Ukrainian naval base in the old Tartar capital of Bakhchisaray. He wore all black, his face hidden by

Wednesday

Brooks Newmark

Ukraine and Syria expose the West’s lack of appetite for protecting human rights

‘We must stop using the language of force and return to the path of civilized diplomatic and political settlement.’ So wrote Vladimir Putin in The New York Times in September last year. Last week, he invaded Ukraine. A system of ‘international law’ which gives a man like President Putin the right to decide whether a proposed action is legal or not, is morally bankrupt. Yet that is how the United Nations Security Council functions – and that is why Western democracies should not shrink from taking action even when the Russian veto stands in the way. President Putin’s New York Times piece was about Syria. He was appealing to the American

Monday

Isabel Hardman

Ukraine: Cameron and Merkel continue to focus on ‘de-escalation’

David Cameron and Angela Merkel held a working dinner last night in Hanover ahead of their visit to a digital trade fair today. Naturally, they discussed Ukraine, and Number 10’s readout of the call this morning says ‘they both agreed that the priority is to de-escalate the situation and to get Russia to engage in a contact group as swiftly as possible’. Cameron also spoke to Vladimir Putin yesterday, with the Russian President telling the Prime Minister that ‘Russia did want to find a diplomatic solution to the crisis’ – although presumably in Putin’s mind that doesn’t involve quite the same level of compromise as those words might initially suggest.

Friday

Alex Massie

The clock is ticking for Vladimir Putin in Ukraine. He has missed his best chance of victory.

Tick tock. Tick tock. Time is running out in the Ukraine. Time passes and cements the “facts on the ground”. Russia controls the Crimea and, one way or another, we should probably expect the province’s referendum to endorse a return to Moscow Centre. Whether Crimea’s plebiscite can or will be conducted honestly is a different matter but that, in the end, is not the most important issue. Indeed the fate and future of Crimea is, if hardly an irrelevance, a question of secondary importance. It is not the major front in this struggle. Russia’s actions in the Crimea are plainly illegal and unjustified but they were supposed to be the

Thursday

Matthew Parris

Leave Ukraine to the Russians

[audioplayer src=”http://traffic.libsyn.com/spectator/Untitled_2_AAC_audio.mp3″ title=”Matthew Parris and Anne Applebaum debate the Ukraine situation”] Listen [/audioplayer]‘You can’t always get what you want,’ chorused Mick Jagger, ‘but if you try some time/You just might find/You get what you need.’ The danger with Ukraine is that the western powers will get what they want, not what we need. I write this as one who has travelled in Ukraine, loved the country and seen that its people (though poor) are talented and energetic. Any reference I make to basket cases refers to the Ukrainian state, not the country’s human resources. What we say we want is for Russia to withdraw from Crimea and turn away from

The Spectator

Where to open your brothel: an international comparison

The best places to open a brothel The Commons all-party group on prostitution has called for a Scandinavian-style law where selling sex would not be illegal but buying it would be. How does the world treat prostitution? — In a survey of 100 countries by the educational charity ProCon, 50 were judged to treat prostitution as illegal, 39 as legal, with the remaining 11 making it an offence in some instances. — Among the most liberal were Canada, where laws against brothel ownership and pimping were recently overturned by the supreme court, the Netherlands, Germany, New Zealand and Greece. — The most severe criminal sanctions were found in Iran, where

Molly Guinness

The Spectator: on 150 years of punishing Russia

Russia’s military intervention in Ukraine has left western diplomats scrabbling for sanctions that won’t backfire on to the rest of Europe and America. The foreign secretary William Hague said Russia must ‘face consequences and costs’. When a policy paper was photographed that said the UK should not support trade sanctions or close London’s financial centre to Russians, Mr Hague said it did not reflect government policy. But punishing Russia is sure to be an expensive business. Just before the Crimean War, when Russia invaded Turkish Moldovia and Wallachia in 1853, a Spectator editorial took a hard line; Russia should be punished on principle. The present operations of Russia proceed entirely

Sebastian Payne

Podcast: Ukraine special, with Matthew Parris, Anne Applebaum and John O’Sullivan

Should we leave Ukraine to the Russians? On this week’s View from 22 podcast, Matthew Parris debates Anne Applebaum on whether the crisis should concern Britain and whether Vladimir Putin has valid reasons to intervening in Crimea. Would Putin have acted differently if Ukraine had NATO membership? What should America do now? And will the West’s behaviour so far embolden other dictators? John O’Sullivan also discusses his Spectator cover feature this week on why we shouldn’t be afraid of Putin. With a lack of actions from the West, is it game, set and match to Putin? Why is he perceived to be so strong? Is John Kerry a dying breed of Americans who really care about Europe?

Martin Vander Weyer Martin Vander Weyer

Any other business: Britain’s chaotic energy policy puts us in Putin’s hands

To have written last month that the headline ‘Kiev in flames’ looked like a black swan on the economic horizon hardly makes me Nostradamus — but sure enough, the tension between Russia and Ukraine have caused stock markets to quiver and the price of UK gas for one-month delivery on the ICE Europe futures exchange in London to rise 10 per cent on Monday. But it was more impressively far-sighted that way back in the winter of 2005/6 we commissioned a Spectator cover showing wicked Vladimir Putin sitting astride a knotted gas pipeline: one sixth of all gas consumed in Europe arrives from Russia across the Ukraine, and another sixth

Wednesday

James Forsyth

PMQs: Cameron won’t commit to travel restrictions on the Russian elite

Six questions from Ed Miliband on Ukraine resulted in a calmer, more discursive PMQs than normal. Though I suspect that the headlines will be grabbed by Samantha Cameron’s presence in the chamber. In response to Miliband’s questions, Cameron indicated that he expected to boycott the G8 meeting in Russia saying that it was ‘hard to see how a G8 meeting could take place in these circumstances.’ Miliband tried to move Cameron towards a tougher line on travel restrictions on the Russian elite, but Cameron side-stepped the question. listen to ‘PMQs: Cameron and Miliband on Ukraine’ on Audioboo

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Vladimir Putin is losing the battle for Ukraine

[audioplayer src=”http://traffic.libsyn.com/spectator/Untitled_2_AAC_audio.mp3″ title=”Anne Applebaum and Matthew Parris debate how far we should let Russia push” startat=81] Listen [/audioplayer]It is always tempting, in the field of foreign affairs, to suppose we are led by dupes and fools while our opponents enjoy – or endure –  leaders of boundless cunning. We are over-matched; they are playing three-dimensional chess. We are weak, they are strong. We are easily distracted, they are single-minded. We compromise, they are implacable. It is easy to over-estimate the opposition while under-estimating our own capabilities. Sometimes this has unfortunate consequences. Saddam Hussein, for instance, had to be hiding something. The Iraqi dictator – notoriously full of dark cunning – would not be

Patrick Allitt

How America’s shale gas revolution makes Putin ever weaker

[audioplayer src=”http://traffic.libsyn.com/spectator/Untitled_2_AAC_audio.mp3″ title=”Anne Applebaum and Matthew Parris debate the Ukraine-Russia situation”] Listen [/audioplayer]Once or twice every century something good happens to Russia, but then another long night of suffering closes over the great Asian wastes. In 1917, the Russians managed to overthrow their hated Czar and proclaim a democracy. It only lasted a few months before being swept away by a much worse autocracy, which stayed in power until 1991. The sudden prospect of post-Soviet freedom was accompanied by the promise of long-delayed prosperity, as the liberated nation began to develop its vast resources, one of which was natural gas. For a few years, Putin’s Russia dominated the international natural

Sebastian Payne

Ukraine polling: EU vs Russian integration and who is the weakest leader?

It’s difficult to figure out exactly what’s going on in Ukraine and what it all means — as Freddy has pointed out there’s a lot of hyperbole at the moment— but where is public opinion on the current situation? There’s some interesting historic polling on where Ukrainians stand on more integration with Europe vs Russia. Ukraine’s ambassador to the European Union Kostyantyn Yeliseyev suggested in 2011 that business tycoons and politicians from the Russian-speaking Eastern regions are just as on board with more EU integration as those from western regions. Yeliseyev noted at the time ‘if any politician today in Ukraine declared himself to be against European integration, he would

Tuesday

Freddy Gray

Ten handy phrases for bluffing your way through the Ukraine crisis

First published in 2014, this bluffer’s guide may still help you feel like Chatham House’s finest at your next dinner party… We’re all journalists now, apparently, so when a major foreign policy crisis comes along it is important to be prepared. Everyone must learn the art of winging it as the big news breaks. That’s not easy these days. What with Wikipedia on every mobile phone, our understanding of international relations can be called into question at any moment. So here, as a beginner’s guide, are ten handy phrases for bluffing your way through a conversation about the situation in Ukraine: ‘It’s simplistic to think in terms of east versus west

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

William Hague insists government’s options remain open on Ukraine

It was clear from William Hague’s statement in the Commons just now that no decisions have been taken on what to do about Ukraine. The Foreign Secretary had already distanced himself from that photographed document when he faced MPs at Foreign Office Questions a little earlier this morning, saying that it didn’t necessarily reflect the action the government would take. The government’s options ‘remain open’, he said. It’s worth considering Labour’s response to the situation. Douglas Alexander struck a consensual tone when he responded at Foreign Office Questions, but some of his colleagues including Kevin Brennan were quite keen to tease out a response to the tweets over the weekend

Ed West Ed West

How many people would lay down their lives for the European Union?

Whatever Russia does in the Ukraine, we know that Britain isn’t going to do much more than say ‘dear, dear’, something that was accidentally revealed when a British official was photographed bringing a document to Downing St stating as much. We’re not going to help for a number of reasons, one of which is that Ukraine is incredibly complicated and historically and psychologically is sort of a part of Russia, or at least the eastern half is. As for the Crimea, Russia certainly has as much right to that province as the Albanians have to Kosovo. Russia is a great power with legitimate claims to that region, and unlike Iraq,