the times | Monday April 4 2022 27
Leading articles
Ukraine would appear to meet the threshold of
genocide.
Indeed, Bucha is just one small town whose
horrors were inflicted during four weeks of Russian
occupation. One can only imagine what similar
atrocities have been and continue to be perpetrated
in other towns and cities under Russian control,
though enough information is emerging from
across the country to know that what has happened
in Bucha was far from an isolated case. It goes
without saying that the evidence of these crimes
must be meticulously collected and every effort
made to bring those responsible to justice. That
must include Mr Putin himself and members of the
Russian president’s inner circle, just as senior Nazis
complicit in Adolf Hitler’s genocidal campaigns
were tried in an international court at Nuremberg.
Yet there can be no justice for the victims of
Russian war crimes unless and until Russia is
militarily defeated in Ukraine. Indeed what the
evidence of Russia’s barbarity surely proves beyond
doubt is that there can be no end to the war in
Ukraine that does not bring Russia’s total military
defeat. Mr Putin made clear before the war that he
did not believe that Ukraine was a real country
and denied its right to exist. By the actions of his
forces, he has shown that he is intent on nothingless than the ethnic cleansing of Ukrainian territory.
There can no longer be any doubt that Ukrainians,
as President Zelensky has said from the start, are
literally fighting for their lives.
Faced with this reality, the West has no option
but to arm Ukrainians with all the weapons at its
disposal to enable them to prevail. Even before
these latest revelations, the prospects for a peace
deal had seemed remote. Now any deal that left a
single Russian soldier on Ukrainian soil is surely
unthinkable. There can be no repeat of 2015, when
the Minsk agreements rewarded Mr Putin for his
original invasion of Ukraine by effectively allowing
Russian-backed separatists to retain control over
the Donbas and Moscow to annex Crimea. A cease-
fire now would merely be a pretext for Russia to
regroup and rearm for a future assault.
The West can no longer be under any illusions
about the nature of this war or the Moscow regime.
Boris Johnson is right to seek to arm Ukraine
with the most sophisticated weaponry available,
including anti-ship missiles. Other western
governments must show similar resolve. The case
for a ban on imports of Russian oil and gas is now
overwhelming. Yes, the cost to the European eco-
nomy will be crippling. But the price of victory for
Mr Putin’s criminal regime would be higher still.overwhelmingly opposed to fracking, they reveal
strong public support for onshore wind. Indeed, a
YouGov poll last year found that nearly 70 per cent
of the public would support onshore wind farms
near where they live. Polls indicate that support
rises higher if it means cheaper energy for residents.
A large expansion of onshore wind ought to be a
key feature of a credible strategy, yet comments
yesterday by Grant Shapps, the transport secretary,
suggest that opposition in cabinet rules this out.
On the other hand, an energy strategy that rests
upon a massively expanded role for nuclear risks
failing the credibility test. That’s not because there
isn’t a role for nuclear as a source of baseload
electricity for when solar and wind supplies are
low. There is a strong case for expanding Britain’s
nuclear fleet of 11 reactors, all but one of which are
due to be deactivated by 2030, with only one new
one, Hinkley Point C, under construction. The
problem is the same one that has dogged all recent
efforts to expand the nuclear fleet: vast costs of
construction.
The energy review needs to contain realistic
plans with deliverable timelines. Boris Johnson’shopes of delivering six or seven new nuclear power
stations by 2050 look implausible given that Britain
has succeeded in starting construction of one in
the past 16 years and even that is nearly a decade
behind schedule and far over budget. What’s
more, under the government’s preferred funding
model, construction costs would be passed on to
consumers long before any electricity is delivered,
further pushing up energy bills. The review must
therefore include plans to expand other sources of
baseload, including battery storage and carbon
capture for gas-fired power stations.
Finally a credible strategy must include plans to
reduce energy demand as well as expand supply.
The government needs to turbo-charge the drive
to improve home insulation, the switch to heat-
pumps and the optimisation of the energy net-
work. A smart grid that allows differential pricing
and households to sell electricity from home solar
panels and electric car batteries could dramatically
reduce energy supply requirements. Such plans
may lack the glamour of Mr Johnson’s fantasy of a
floating wind farm in the Irish Sea. But they would
show that the government is serious.finally and rightly driven out of public life and
forced to relinquish his royal titles when it became
clear that he had run out of road in his efforts to
avoid answering allegations of sexual assault in a
New York court. He subsequently paid a reported
£12 million to Virginia Giuffre, a woman he claimed
never to have met, to settle the case. It is still
unclear where he obtained the money. Ms Giuffre
had alleged that she was forced to have sex with
the prince after being trafficked to him by Jeffrey
Epstein, with whom Prince Andrew continued to
associate even after the financier was convicted of
being a paedophile and served time in prison.Prince Andrew’s poor judgment has been back in
the headlines again over the past week after claims
emerged that he had received £1 million from an
alleged Turkish fraudster. Although the prince has
not been personally accused of wrongdoing, it is a
reminder that his and his former wife’s endless
quest for money and the lifestyle to which they be-
lieve themselves entitled has consistently blinded
them to the shadow that their associations cast on
the royal family and the institution of monarchy.
If Prince Andrew cannot see it for himself, then
senior members of the royal household must spell
it out. There can and must be no way back.War Criminals
The horrific scenes emerging from Bucha outside Kyiv can leave the West under no
illusions about the nature of the war in Ukraine or the regime in the Kremlin
The reports of almost unimaginable barbarity
emerging from Ukraine are so harrowing that
they appear to come from another age. Bodies
burned with their hands tied behind their backs,
left by the side of the road. Civilian cars containing
the corpses of murdered families, shot as they
tried to flee the fighting. A mass grave filled with
almost 300 bodies. Mutilated corpses alongside the
bodies of murdered children. Reports of soldiers
killing every male aged between 16 and 60.
Women whose husbands have just been murdered
raped in front of their children. Yet these are not
reports of atrocities carried out by Nazis in 1945,
but the seemingly monstrous acts of Russian
soldiers in Bucha and other liberated towns
around Kyiv which they had been occupying until
being forced to retreat last week.
There can be little doubt that what is emerging
from liberated towns and villages amounts to evi-
dence of war crimes. What is even more disturbing
is that these do not appear to be random acts of
violence by ill-trained, ill-disciplined, ill-equipped
Russian soldiers in the midst of war. Instead, the
systematic murder of fighting-age men points to a
Russian policy aimed not only at terrorising
Ukrainians but destroying Ukrainian nationhood.
As such, what Vladimir Putin’s forces are doing inPower Play
The government needs realistic plans to boost energy supply and reduce demand
The government is expected finally to publish its
much delayed energy strategy review on Thursday.
The review is urgently needed both to address the
soaring energy prices that are inflicting financial
hardship on many households but also to end
Britain’s reliance on Russian oil and gas so as to
avoid funding Vladimir Putin’s war machine. The
clear test of the credibility of whatever the
government announces must be whether and
how quickly it reduces Britain’s dependence on
expensive hydrocarbons for the bulk of its energy.
The chances of meeting that test look slim,
given the rifts within the government and Con-
servative Party that have so far held up the review
for more than a month. Bizarrely, Tory MPs have
fought furiously in favour of restarting fracking,
which would do nothing to reduce Britain’s reliance
on hydrocarbons, while fiercely resisting any
reversal of the de-facto ban on new onshore wind
farms, which would be by far the quickest and
cheapest way to bring new energy on stream.
Both would of course be difficult to deliver since
they are beholden to local planning decisions.
But whereas polls indicate that the public isNo Way Back
Prince Andrew must not play any further role in public life
Few will have begrudged Prince Andrew his role
by the Queen’s side at the memorial service to his
father, the Duke of Edinburgh, last week, even if
his brief reappearance on the public stage will
have left many feeling uncomfortable. Yet any
suggestion that this could be a first step towards
the disgraced royal’s wider rehabilitation, as the
prince himself appears to hope, will strike most
people as abhorrent. There should be no question
of the prince playing any further role in public
events this year, including the forthcoming
celebrations of his mother’s platinum jubilee.
Lest the prince has already forgotten, he wasUK: Office for National Statistics delivers
monthly estimate of GDP; the legal
requirement for people to wear masks in
places of worship is lifted in Scotland.
With their tatty
wing outlines and
resting similarity to
a dead leaf, tan and
brown comma
butterflies are easily
recognised. They
are on the wing again now, having
overwintered as adults, and can be seen in
increasing numbers across much of the UK,
a rare success story amid a picture of
widespread insect declines. The main food
plant for comma caterpillars used to be
hops, and numbers crashed as commercial
hop production contracted; however,
commas changed their preferences in
response and began laying eggs on nettles
instead. Happily, they have now recovered
from near-extinction, and are even
expanding their range into Scotland and
Ireland. melissa harrison
In 1949 , 12 nations signed the North Atlantic
Treaty in Washington, forming Nato. The
treaty came into force on August 24, 1949.
Graham Norton,
pictured, radio and TV
presenter, Virgin Radio
UK and The Graham
Norton Show, and writer,
Holding (2016), 59;
Jonathan Agnew, BBC
cricket correspondent
(since 1991), 62; Delphine Arnault, executive
vice-president, Louis Vuitton, 47; Richard
Attwood, Formula One driver (1964-65,
1967-69) and 24 Hours of Le Mans co-
winner (1970), 82; Dame Phyllida Barlow,
sculptor, 78; David Blaine, illusionist, 49;
Johnny Borrell, guitarist and singer,
Razorlight, Up All Night (2004), 42;
Baroness (Karren) Brady, businesswoman,
vice-chairwoman, West Ham United FC,
adviser to Lord Sugar on The Apprentice
(since 2009), 53; William Burns, director of
the CIA, 66; James Cuno, president and
chief executive, J Paul Getty Trust, 71; Clive
Davis, music producer, president, Columbia
Records (1967-73), 90; Robert Downey Jr,
actor, Chaplin (1992), 57; Jane Eaglen,
soprano, 62; Yakir Gola, founder and co-
chief executive of Gopuff (grocery delivery
company), 29; Trevor Griffiths, playwright,
Comedians (1975), 87; Chris Hirst, chief
executive, Havas Creative (global advertising
agency), 51; Nick Hugh, chief executive,
Telegraph Media Group, 47; Vladimir
Jurowski, conductor, conductor emeritus,
London Philharmonic Orchestra, 50; Sheku
Kanneh-Mason, cellist, BBC Young
Musician of the Year award winner (2016),
23; Kitty Kelley, journalist and biographer,
80; Mary Kenny, journalist and author,
Conversation before a Hanging (2016), 78; Sir
Greg Knight, Conservative MP for East
Yorkshire, industry minister (1996-97), 73;
Cherie Lunghi, actress, Excalibur (1981), 70;
Caroline Michel, chief executive, Peters
Fraser & Dunlop (literary agency), 63; Craig
T Nelson, actor, Poltergeist (1982), 78; Monty
Norman, composer, Dr No (1962), 94; Hugo
Weaving, actor, The Hobbit film series (2012,
2014), 62; Admiral Sir George Zambellas,
DSC, first sea lord and chief of the naval
staff (2013-16), 64.
“True friendship is like sound health; the value
of it is seldom known until it be lost.” Charles
Caleb Colton, British author, clergyman and
art collector, Lacon (1820).
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