NEWS 5
9 April 2022 THE WEEK...and how they were covered
However appalling the atrocities committed
by Russian troops, said Reaction, they
cannot disguise the fact that “Ukraine is
winning” this war. When Vladimir Putin
first launched his invasion, his plan was
to “stretch” the Ukrainian military by
launching assaults from every direction
except the West. He then hoped to “engulf
the country quickly” and take the capital,
Kyiv. Yet six weeks on, it’s clear his plan
has failed. Russia has been unable to topple
Ukraine’s government, or to take a single
major city bar Kherson. It has suffered huge
losses: seven of its 20 generals have been killed, and up to
40,000 of its troops have been “killed, wounded or gone
missing”; others are said to be mutinous. The Kremlin’s
announcement last week that it was scaling back its forces
around Kyiv was merely a recognition of the facts on the
ground, said Andrew Neil in the Daily Mail. Now, the Russian
army is leaving the region “en masse”, discarding equipment
and leaving behind “trapped pockets” of its own soldiers.
The upshot? “Ukrainians are beginning to see that victory –
not just a debilitating stalemate – is possible.”
Declarations that Russia is losing this war are premature, said
The Wall Street Journal. “It isn’t. Russia has killed thousands
of Ukrainians, inflicted untold damage, and still controls more
territory than it did before the invasion.” By withdrawing from
Kyiv, Putin may just be “regrouping his forces” for a fresh
onslaught on Kyiv, or turning his attention elsewhere: the
bombardment of Odessa this week suggests
the Black Sea port remains a Kremlin target.
“The Russian army’s failures and short-
comings don’t make it a spent force,” agreed
The Economist. The Kremlin is not lying
when it says it has made progress in Donbas
in Ukraine’s east. From here on in, this is
where Russia is likely to focus its efforts,
diverting troops from areas like Kyiv and
Chernihiv in a bid to outnumber Ukrainian
forces. The date to watch is 9 May, said
David Charter in The Times, when Russia
holds its annual “Victory Day” military
parade in Red Square. This year, Putin is
desperate for something to celebrate: victory
in Donbas would give him precisely that.But could Russian setbacks offer a path to peace? Not yet, said
Lawrence Freedman in the FT. “For now, neither side has an
incentive to commit to a long-term settlement.” Ukraine is
inflicting heavy losses; Russia’s initial demands are “still on the
table”. And while Kyiv could adopt a neutral status to secure
peace, it won’t accept Russian control over the energy-rich
Donbas region. So far, the West has been united on the need to
help Ukraine, said Fraser Nelson in The Daily Telegraph. But
on the question of when fighting should stop, “the alliance is
fracturing”. Officials in Germany may want a swift peace deal
for humanitarian and economic reasons; but others, including
some in the US and UK, calculate that their interests are best
served by Ukraine fighting on, bogging Putin down in a costly
war. One thing, however, is clear: Ukraine’s President Zelensky
has earned “the right to agree peace on his own terms” –
whatever the views of people in foreign capitals.Russia’s strategy
In a world torn apart by plague and war, it comes as a relief to find
our politicians targeting a less lethal, more homegrown scourge:
I refer, of course, to the metropolitan elite. Its crimes are legion,
particularly at the BBC, as Culture Secretary Nadine Dorries was keen to point out a few months ago
when she tore into it for being snobbish and lacking “social diversity”. And it got me wondering: am
I part of this elite? My father was an Army officer, I’m in “the media”, but I lack an attribute that makes
this elite so different from every other elite in history: self-hatred. True members of the metropolitan
elite make whatever gestures they can to deplore the supremacy of... the metropolitan elite. It was in
this spirit that BBC execs announced last week that “to get closer to its audience” Auntie will ensure
that by 2027, 25% of staff will be from working-class backgrounds (up from 20.2% today). This doesn’t
apply to the existing execs of course (though if the BBC is out of touch, it’s surely their doing): no one
is sacking themselves. Nor, given that parental occupation is being used as a proxy for working-class
status, is it a consideration being applied in the choice of new political editor, leading candidates
being Chris Mason (teachers), Sophy Ridge (teachers) and Anushka Asthana (doctors). Likely as not
the edict will mainly affect junior and clerical jobs, though how this will bring the BBC “closer to its
audience” is anyone’s guess. But let’s not be too hard on the metropolitan elite. We all want rules that
make the world a fairer place: we just don’t want them to apply to us.THE WEEK
Jeremy O’GradySubscriptions: 0330-333 9494; [email protected] © Future PLC 2022. All rights reserved. The Week is a
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More than four million people have fled
Ukraine since Russia began its barbaric
invasion, said The Observer, in what the UN
has called “the fastest-growing refugee crisis
since the Second World War”. And across
Europe, countries have responded with
precisely the kind of urgency such a crisis
warrants: Poland has taken in 2.5 million
refugees; Romania 600,000; tiny Moldova
400,000. The UK, by contrast, has been
painfully slow to act. Its “Homes for Ukraine”
scheme, which lets Ukrainians come to Britain if they are matched
with a host who acts as a “sponsor” for their visa, belatedly
launched on 14 March. Yet three weeks have passed, and still
there is a hold-up: as of this week, a measly 4,700 visas have
been issued – “not even a sixth of the number of applications”.
The public aren’t to blame for this lamentable failure, said
Stephen Pollard in the Daily Express: some 200,000 of us have
registered to offer rooms to Ukrainians. No, fault lies squarely
with the Home Office, a woefully under-performing departmentwhich has somehow “turned a story of British
generosity into one of administrative chaos”.
Just look at the application form Ukrainians
have to fill: it’s 51 pages long and its questions
include “are you a war criminal?” Even when
completed, applications are taking “weeks”
to process when they should take hours. No
wonder, then, that just 500 of the people so far
granted visas have actually made it to the UK.
“It is not too late to fix this”, said The Sunday
Times. And in a bid to do so, the Government
has parachuted in Simon Ridley, who ran the
Cabinet Office’s Covid task force, as a temporary
permanent secretary to oversee the response, while former Tory
MP Richard Harrington has been made “minister for refugees”.
The Government hopes it will soon be processing 15,000 visas
a week, and says a further 24,400 visas have been granted to
Ukrainians with family in the UK. For now, though, too many
refugees remain stuck in a “bureaucratic mangle”, said Rafael
Behr in The Guardian. “These are people’s lives, their hopes”. It’s
high time the government showed them – as well as those who
have volunteered to house them – some basic human decency.A failing refugee policy?
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Putin: is Donbas the prize now?
Refugees arriving in Poland