Ukraine crisis: a rolling index…
All my writing and speaking on the war in chronological order
Below is everthing I’ve written about Ukraine, Russia and UK defence since the first deployment of Russian troops at the border in April 2021. It’s in chronological order, most recent first.
Pinned: First Day of the War
VIDEO — 24/02/2022
Interview BBC Politics Live
Oil and Gas embargo debate
NEW STATESMAN — 07/03/2022
Sanctions are pointless without oil and gas
At the outbreak of war in 1939, the British government had no qualms at setting up a “Ministry of Economic Warfare”. Its title at least had the virtue of honesty. Much of today’s political class still doesn’t realise that we have entered a systemic conflict with a raging, doomed dictatorship — and that to deter military aggression, economic pressure has to be focused, relentless and fast.
Ukrainians demonstrate in London
VIDEO — 05/03/2022
Speech in Trafalgar Square — excerpt
This week I’ve talked to young people preparing for occupation. They’re setting up VPNs, scrubbing their phones, switching to Protonmail and Signal. But they’re not in Ukraine — theyre in Latvia and Poland. Because they know what’s coming.
Russia occupies more territory
HOW TO STOP FASCISM — 05/03/2022
Who’s Winning The Ukraine War?
When I met senior military and defence officials in Kyiv, two days before the war started, they told me that with 127,000 troops Putin “has the ability to force us back, and into negotiations, but cannot occupy. Give him two months to mobilise double that number and occupation is possible”. What they predicted has happened.
Western response to Ukraine war
NEW EUROPEAN — 03/03/2022
Our Liberal Dream Is Over
Everyone who framed their political assumptions around the eternal existence of an order based on the international rule of law, a global marketplace for talent, semiconductors and energy, and a stable geopolitics, will be thrown into confusion.
Labour left in crisis over Ukraine — March 2022
NEW STATESMAN — 03/03/2022
The Labour Left Needs to Get Serious on Defence
In the run up to the war, Stop the War was a dynamo of misleadership….The mistake was to identify Britain as the aggressor; to reduce Ukraine and its people to the status of pawns in an inter-imperialist game, with no agency of their own; to continually make the case that Russia was the wronged party, with legitimate security concerns; and to oppose arming the victims. And these are big mistakes.
BYLINE TV — 28/02/2022
Interview:Putin’s Motivation
Russian war aims revealed — February 2022
HOW TO STOP FASCISM — 28/02/2022
Ukraine — A Battle For Existence
The stakes in that conflict were revealed in a Russian state media essay yesterday: the total destruction of Ukraine both as a sovereign nation and as a national identity, via its re-absorption unto Russia.
Russian suffers initial setbacks — February 2022
HOW TO STOP FASCISM — 26/02/22
Putin’s Land Grab Falters
Time is Putin’s biggest enemy. He went straight from missile strikes to an armoured thrust on Kyiv, sending airborne troops to capture and then lose Hostomel (which he has now taken again by tanks). He is still sending airborne troops into defended airspace — ie on suicide missions. Because he needs the political capitulation of Ukraine fast.
Ukraine solidarity demo — February 2022
TWITTER — 26/02/2022
Speech on Whitehall — SWIFT sanctions now!
Russia invades Ukraine — February 2022
MEDIUM — 25/02/2022
Ukraine: The Politics of Dying
Yesterday was the moment even sceptics finally understood that Russia and China have abandoned the rules-based global order for a mercurial chaos based on armed force. They understood that Putin and Xi are no longer issuing calls for a more equitable global arrangement, but imposing it by killing people. The rules based order has been replaced with systemic conflict.
Russia occupies DNR/LNR — February 2022
MEDIUM — 22/02/2022
Ukraine Crisis 101
Could we have stopped this? Yes. Plenty of people warned about it. But politicians like Boris Johnson just kept on taking money from Russian oligarchs and letting them use London as a money laundering centre for their stolen mon
Putin/Xi Jin Ping Declaration — February 2022
NEW EUROPEAN — 22/02/2022
The West Can’t Win Unless We Renew Ourselves
The Putin-Xi declaration is not simply designed for domestic consumption. It is designed to persuade people in the West who don’t like the reality they live in. It is an appeal pitched squarely at the Ottawa truckers, the far-right voters in France who support Éric Zemmour. It will be presented as the moral justification for Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.
Diplomatic flurry after Munich — February 2022
HOW TO STOP FASCISM
International law: dead or just resting?
If the very existence of your country under international law is not longer recognised by the major powers that guaranteed its existence, what’s left of the rest of the collective security system?
Debate over anti-imperialism— February 2022
MEDIUM — 21/02/2022
Learning To Say ‘Goodbye Lenin’
The concrete truth is that the invasion of Ukraine, to topple its government, annex its territory and destroy its democracy, will be a crime under international law and an act of violence against the working class and minorities — which the population will rightly resist.
Kyiv on the eve of war — February 2022
MEDIUM — 20/02/2022
The Strategy of Relaxation
Why should those kids, those parents, those grandparents and — yes, the poor bloody journalistic infantry in their flak jackets — have to suffer the possibility of a unilateral declaration of war, massive loss of life and the destruction of sovereignty for a country of 41 million people? Because Zelensky is right. The security architecture of Europe is broken.
NATO puts troops on alert — February 2022
NEW EUROPEAN — 17/02/2022
Let’s build a military that looks like modern Britain
After years of shrinkage, we’re going to need a bigger military. I don’t like it, and maybe you don’t either — but we won’t like the world as it would be if we were defenceless against these billionaire crooks. An expanded reserve, rooted in the diverse communities of Britain, is something politicians should seriously consider.
Biden warns of imminent attack — February 2022
MEDIUM — 12/02/2022
Panic Stations Over Ukraine
I read Biden’s statement as a final attempt to bounce the Zelensky government into accepting the Russian interpretation of Minsk II. This would allow the Russian-controlled territories in Luhansk and Donetsk to become special regions of Ukraine, with a veto over its foreign policy.
Putin’s left apologists mobilise— January 2022
NEW STATESMAN — 26/01/2022
How to Stop Putin’s War
As for that section of the Anglo-American left that has become a fan club for Putin, all we can do is help them move from their current world of abstraction to the world of concrete reality — where socialism and anti-imperialism are about defending the victims of oligarchic states, not apologising for their aggression.
Troop buildup intensifies — January 2021
HOW TO STOP FASCISM — 25/01/2022
Ukraine: Tracking The Deployments
On the Russian side, the main active development has been the deployment of troops on excercise into Belarus, close to the border with Ukraine. Unlike the units parked near the Ukraine-Russia border, regularly shown as static in Western satellite imagery, the excercising units are active and in the field
Building Russia-Ukraine solidarity — January 2021
MEDIUM — 24/01/2022
No War In Ukraine!
Nobody can stop Ukraine’s desire to join, or partner with, the EU and NATO. I would encourage both. But the price of stability now may have to be a formalised delay. A formalised delay, combined with capacity building in Ukraine’s civil society, and the buildup of its armed forces, seems to me the best way of averting conflict now.
Long read on Russian hybrid warfare strategy — January 2021
MEDIUM — 18/01/2022
Panic, Slaughter and Lies
What happens next in Ukraine is not a self-contained spasm, which might be contained when it’s over. Basically it’s one stage in an attempt to redraw the political map of the world.
Left apologists back Donbas claims — December 2021
HOW TO STOP FASCISM — 21/12/2021
Russia-Ukraine: Who Is The Aggressor?
There is in short no NATO plan to seize Ukraine; no possibility of Ukraine joining NATO; no arming to the hilt; no significant number of British troops in the Balkans; no major deployment of NATO troops “eastwards towards Poland”. NATO is not pushing to expand into Ukraine, it is actively avoiding doing so.
Putin issues draft treaties — December 2021
HOW TO STOP FASCISM — 17/12/2021
Ukraine: Putin Presents His Demands
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, in his first remarks to the Bundestag, warned the domestic far right that Germany is a “wehrhafte democratie” — a democracy armed battle-ready in its own self defence. In the face of Putin’s gambit, the entire West needs to emulate that approach.
Biden and Johnson talk tough — November 2021
SOCIAL EUROPE — 29/11/2021
Putin, Pugilism and Pusillanimity
No US leader, or major European politician, has placed any significant emphasis on actively supporting democratic oppositions east of the River Bug. That is a reflection of the fragility of western democracy itself: sorting out other people’s political systems looks to many reluctant realists like a luxury the west no longer enjoys.
Alarm over troop mobilisation — January 2022
NEW EUROPEAN — 18/11/2021
The West Must Act Now
For the foreseeable future, no US government will fight Russia to defend Ukraine. Nor is there any appetite in Europe, among the electorate or the political class, for a war with Russia. Therefore, as long as Russia is ruled by an unstable narcissist, prone to histrionics and diplomacy by tank battalion, there can be no prospect of Ukraine joining NATO.
Russia demonstrates space weapon — November 2021
NEW STATESMAN — 17/11/2021
How to Halt the Space Arms Race
Russia’s position remains that until the West is prepared to sign a binding legal instrument totally demilitarising space (and thus foregoing decades of the US’s advantage in the arms race), it will oppose the various voluntary agreements and transparency projects on offer.
The Belarus refugee crisis — November 2021
NEW STATESMAN — 15/11/2021
The West Must Confront Russia and Belarus
Western governments have no effective strategy other than sanctions to combat the mixture of destabilisation, disinformation, organised crime and military posturing coming from Minsk and Moscow. Their expensively maintained conventional armed forces look useless in deterring this unconventional and lawless form of aggression.
Putin’s diatribe on Ukrainian nationhood — August 2021
NEW STATESMAN — 04/08/2021
Why We Are Entering A New Great Game
Putin’s anti-factual diatribe against Ukraine looks, to the globalist political elite, like the outpouring of a crank — but in his own way he has grasped the essentials of 21st-century statecraft. Create a myth, assemble fragmentary historical facts to support it, and then create new facts on the ground that sustain the myth. Erdogan, Xi and Modi are all engaged in the same basic operation.
Russia deploys troops to Ukraine border — April 2021
NEW STATESMAN — 14/04/2021
As Russia Threatens to Invade Ukraine the West Appears Paralysed
Volodymyr Zelensky’s Ukrainian government is behaving as if it has the backing of Nato and as if the US will come to its defence if needed. Each of these assumptions is wrong. Nato may have been sparked back into life with Donald Trump gone, but it has no “strategic concept” — to use the jargon — for defending Ukraine against Russian conquest.
