“Ukraine – Russia”

Western incoherence and Russian opportunism have led Ukraine into disaster.

As Russian troops pile into Ukraine, and Russian bombs fall on Ukrainian cities, what are the security services in the UK focusing on? White privilege. This is not a joke. As the Daily Mail reports today, ‘Britain’s spies are being urged to consider their “white privilege” and declare their pronouns as Europe descends into war’. This comes from a leaked report on ‘improving diversity’ in the security services, written by Sir Stephen Lovegrove, the UK’s national security adviser. It also advises against using gendered terms like ‘manpower’ and even words like ‘strong’ and ‘grip’, which can ‘reinforce dominant cultural patterns’. And there you have it: as Putin plays the strongman, our security bosses are saying ze and zir and advising against inappropriate usage of upsetting words like… ‘strength’.

In 1946, Walter Bedell “Beetle” Smith, who was the new ambassador to the Soviet Union, left Spaso House late at night to meet with Generalissimo Josef Stalin in the Kremlin. Winston Churchill had recently delivered his Iron Curtain speech and relations between West and East could hardly have been frostier. The Cold War had begun. The first question Smith asked the Soviet leader was “What does the Soviet Union want, and how far is Russia going to go?” Stalin was impassive. “He did not look at me directly,” Smith wrote in his memoirs, “but kept his head turned to one side, taking an occasional puff from a long Russian cigarette.” After Smith reiterated the question, Stalin looked directly at him and said, “We’re not going much further.”

Vladimir Putin has said there is broad public support for the invasion of Ukraine that he announced just before dawn on Thursday morning. But by evening, thousands of people in cities across Russia had defied police threats to take to central squares and protest against the military campaign.

Police had made at least 1,702 arrest in 53 Russian cities as of Thursday evening, according to the OVD-Info monitor, as they cracked down on the unsanctioned protests. Most of the arrests were made in Moscow and St Petersburg, where the crowds were largest.

The protesters chanted: “No to war!” as they exchanged shocked reactions to the attack on Ukraine.

This feels like the flip side of the White House’s rhetorical game-playing about “invasions” versus “minor incursions.” How “minor” does an incursion need to be to avoid qualifying as an “invasion”?

Similarly, how restrained does the U.S. response to Russian aggression need to be to avoid qualifying as “major? The term is sufficiently vague that it can mean anything.

I hope Trudeauscu commits to 40,000 Ukraine refugees as he did for his Afghan Mohammedans.

Imagine – it’s winter. Heating oil prices are rising. Low temperatures are forecast for the next few days.

You turn on your television and hear the first reports of a massive cyberattack against America’s largest pipeline.

Ransomware has infected the company’s computer system, bringing operations to a halt as IT staff work feverishly to stop the spread.

In the wake of what the Nato secretary general, Jens Stoltenberg, described as Russia’s “fully fledged invasion of Ukraine”, the west has to decide how to respond to what France’s Emmanuel Macron has called a turning point in European history.

Yet can the west now offer Ukraine more than a mixture of prayers, sanctions and diplomatic demarches? Throughout this conflict western intelligence has shown it has been able to predict Putin’s next step, but less capable of stopping it. Boris Johnson told the Ukrainian people “we are with you”, but what this western solidarity means in practice is now up for debate.

Russian forces have seized control of Chernobyl nuclear power plant after a ‘fierce’ battle, with the condition of nuclear storage facilities ‘unknown’, sparking fears of a radiation leak that could cause fallout in Europe.

Video revealed Russian tanks and armoured vehicles standing in front of the destroyed reactor, which sits just 60 miles north of the capital Kiev.

Meanwhile Turkey reported that one of its ships had been hit by a ‘bomb’ off the coast of Odessa, where fighting is also going on. Turkey is a member of NATO, underlining fears that the war in Ukraine could quickly suck in other states and spark an all-out conflict in Europe.