Can Putin really be ignorant of what's happening in Ukraine?

You and I and most of the rest of the world - and surely Vladimir Putin too - knows that the Russian war in Ukraine is going terribly for the Kremlin. How is it possible that Putin is so locked away in his Kremlin bunker that he hasn't a clue about all the stuff we have been reading about and watching on TV for the last five weeks. This is the 21st century. Putin has TV sets everywhere, he has a mobile, he has a radio or two, he has internet, he can Google, he can watch Fox News, CNN, the BBC. Basically he can do what we all can do. So surely he knows everything. We know most stuff, so he must know a lot more. Yet the US and UK intelligence services insist that Putin is being deprived of all the latest info from the front by his military advisers because they are scared to tell him, and he has no idea that Russian conscripts are deserting every day in Ukraine, that he has lost so many tanks he will soon have to get a lot more out of storage, and that his own troops have been shooting down Russian jet fighters in error. Really? Really? Now I know that Iraqi advisers to Saddam Hussein reportedly never told the Iraqi dictator that he didn't have any weapons of mass destruction anymore - actually I don't believe that either - but if Putin asks Sergei Shoigu, the Russian defence minister, whether everything is going according to plan, will he say, yes, boss, it's all tickety-boo. OK, Shoigu might not dot all the i's and cross all the t's but surely he's not going to tell a barefaced lie to his commander-in-chief? Putin absolutely must know because five weeks have gone by and there is no victory parade in Kyiv. He has to know that his "special military operation" has gone haywire. I don't know why the US and UK spooks have decided to tell the world that they believe Putin is being kept out of the loop, it must be based on something very classified, but I just don't believe Putin is walking around the Kremlin rubbing his hands in glee at the brilliant achievements of his invasion force. He knows. He knows! That's why he is so dangerous because he hates losing and if he feels everything is going wrong he might do something cataclysmic for the whole world. But as I wrote yesterday he doesn't care about anything other than his personal power and his ability to wield power without opposition far into the future. He will know what the West's spook chiefs have been saying and he will laugh. He has turned the world upside down and he will think that in itself is a huge achievement. So it doesn't matter what western intelligence services say. He knows his own truth and that's fine for him.

No one's going to topple Putin

Putin is here to stay. He didn't fight his way up the KGB and power ladder to give it all up because of a disastrous war. And in any event he won't be looking at his invasion of Ukraine as a disaster. He will be looking at it as a major success because he sent nearly 200,000 troops into Ukraine, destroyed almost a whole city - Mariupol - smashed into hospitals, schools, apartment blocks, killed thousands of civilians and bombarded the hell out of a dozen towns and the only thing Nato did was to impose sanctions and arm the Kyiv government with anti-tank and anti-air missiles. In fact Putin scored a victory even before Russia invaded because Biden said he would never send US troops to Ukraine whatever Moscow did. So, thank you Biden. that sounds like carte blanche to bomb away. So, yes, I think Putin will be pretty pleased so far, never mind that every western newspaper and TV station and every Pentagon briefer have been laughing at Russia's cackhanded invasion strategy and highlighting the huge Russian casualties and the abject failure to send enough fuel, food and logistical back-up to keep his invasion force moving. Putin will be angry, certainly, at his generals's incompetence. But he still knows Biden and his Nato partners are scared stiff at what he might do next and tremble at the thought of doing or saying anything which might lead to World War Three, and President Zelensky is pleading for a ceasefire and offering major concesssions, including neutrality. Putin will enjoy all that. Meanwhile, he's going to grab the Donbas region in eastern Ukraine, or at least have a go at doing so, and will then have control over the second largest reserves of natural gas in the world. If he achieves that he will be able to add to his blackmailing potential, particularly with Europe. If he's lucky it might just undermine the unity of the trans-Atlantic alliance which right now looks pretty solid. Putin still holds many trump (not Trump) cards. Ukraine and the western world, take note and be warned.

How can Russia ever be trusted?

A deal seems to be emerging in the Russia/Ukraine negotiations in Istanbul. But the deal sounds to me like cloud cuckoo land. Who is fooling whom? The Russians are saying they will drastically reduce attacks on Kyiv as part of the peace offer. That isn't a peace deal and anyway who can trust the Russians to do what they say they will do? And what on earth is Putin's strategy? If, as is being claimed, the main focus of his invasion force will now be on eastern Ukraine in the Donbas region why didn't they do that in the first place instead of destroying Mariupol and attempt to put Kyiv under siege? It makes no sense. Russia has lost thousands of troops, tanks and helicopters and a landing ship and for what? Just to show they can do it? It has achieved nothing except give Russia pariah status in the world. Putin is not interested in peace. He didn't order his troops into Ukraine in order to force the Kyiv government into a peace deal. He wanted subjugation, he wanted Ukraine to be absorbed into Russia. But he won't get any of that if there is a peace settlement. That's good for the rest of us and good for Ukraine of course but it begs the question: what is Putin up to? Is he really, after just one month of fighting, albeit with hardly any progress, now ready to sue for peace? The former KGB officer and president until 2036 is happy to do a deal with ZelenskY? Really? I just don't believe it. He sent his assassins to kill Zelensky. This is Putin, stoney-faced Putin! He is not a peace-deal type. So watch out Zelensky. Russia is losing, this peace-talk stuff is all part of a devious Putin plot. Of that I am sure.

Giving Putin anything will stick in the throat for ever

"Peace" negotiations between Ukraine and Russia have already moved to the notion that Vladimir Putin might get something out of his brutal, destructive invasion strategy. Already we've had President Zelensky offering to give up any idea of Nato membership and then he suggested a neutrality position for the country could be contemplated provided there were security guarantees. No doubt under pressure from the West, Zelensky might next be forced to acknnowledge that part of his beloved country might have to be sliced off and converted into an independent Russian enclave. Any deal that concedes anything to Putin will be obscene. He grabbed two provinces in Georgia and the West did nothing. Then he annexed Crimea and the West didn't stop him. Now he could end up with a chunk of eastern Ukraine in return for stopping the murder of Ukrainian people and destroying cities to rubble. Poor brave Zelensky wants to save his country from destruction and/or occupation and he has a responsibility to look at all the options. If he remains defiant to the end then more and more of his citizens will be killed. It's the terrible dilemma of a national leader. The trouble is he is only considering these concessions to Putin because he and his countrymen are fighting alone against Russia. The West has provided thousands of tons of weapons and ammunition but no troops, and no tanks and no fighter aircraft and definitely no resolution to take on Russia militarily because of the Third World War armageddon scenario. So Zelensky is on his own and has no choice but to seek a compromising peace deal. If this all ends up with Putin getting what he wants or at least a part of what he wants, and the war comes to an end and Putin never ends up in a war crimes court, then there is only one word that will sum up such a conclusion: shameful.

Biden said what we all think but....

Of course Vladimir Putin should not be president of a nuclear-armed Russia, for the sake of world peace and safety. And of course we all agree with Joe Biden that "for God's sake this man cannot remain in power". But everyone with any brain cells, including those in power in Moscow, knows full well that Biden was not threatening a US-led bid to unseat Putin. What he meant was that someone like Putin who has launched an invasion of a sovereign country without any provocation from that country should not be a leader. But the White House tried to clarify his remark, made in a speech in Poland, that he wasn't seeking regime-change, just that he was pointing out Putin should not be allowed to exercise power over a neighbour. In my view that was a pretty desperate and stupid clarification which won't fool Moscow one bit. Biden did not say in his speech in Poland that he thought it wrong for the leader of Russia to execise power over a neighbour. He and every Nato leader has been sayig that ever since the invasion of Ukraine was launched. What he said and meant was that Putin was a dangerous man and shouldn't be leader of Russia. Even gaffe-prone Biden knows in his head that he was NOT calling for the toppling of Putin in a regime-change invasion of Russia. But a month into this war and no one is talking or thinking sensibly. Any commwent from the president of the United States that can be interpreted in different ways when the whole world's stability and future are at stake is foolish to say the least, and potentially dangerous. Why does Biden do this? He has a speech all written down in front of him and then suddenly he gets emotional and throws in a line that causes global upheaval. Like when he was asked at a town hall meeting what he would do if China invaded Taiwan and he said the US would rush to Taiwan's rescue. Again, the White House had to try and rewrite his words or at least the meaning of his words so as not to anger Beijing, even though what Biden said is probably true. Is it possible that Biden is much more cunning than we think and on each occasion he was sending out a genuine message to Russia and China respectively and that rather than it being a faux pas, he fully intended to say what he said? Unfortunately I don't think so. I really do think he gets a rush of blood and out it comes. What he says he does mean but he knows as president that he should't say such things because of the repercussions that could follow. So in each case it was yet another Biden gaffe, another example of the president speaking unwisely off the cuff. And yet on each occasion he actually said what we all think: Putin should go, and if Taiwan is invaded by China the US will intervene.

Biden and Putin will always be enemies but must talk at some stage

There appears to be no turning back for Joe Biden and Vladimir Putin. Biden has now called Putin a war criminal and a butcher. When the war in Ukraine is over - and if the world has survived - Biden will be reluctant to ever ring/talk/meet or even say hello to Putin. On the face of it, the bad-mouthing has gone too far for the two leaders to ever consider being civil to each other again. Which is understandable because Putin is a monster who is killing women and children in Ukraine like he doesn't care. He thinks avoiding killing civilians - what the West calls colateral damage - is for whimps. But for the leaders of the two biggest nuclear powers to stop talking to each other is unfortunately bad news for the rest of us. At some point - it may be many months away - Putin will have to be spoken to. And not by Macron who has had endless conversations with the Russian so-called leader without getting anywhere. Biden speaks so gently and quietly I doubt Putin can even hear what he is saying. But in the future when Putin realises he has to at least acknowledge Biden's presence, the US president will have to speak up and more robustly than he has done so far. Putin needs to be put in his place but for the sake of world peace, Biden and Putin will have to talk. But right now the language has become so belligerent it seems unlikely Biden will want to sit down with Putin whatever eventually happens in Ukraine. But US presidents have sat down with butchers and war criminals before, and unless Putin is overthrown - an unlikely event - Biden will have to deal with this terrible man, nauseating though it might seem right now.

The Russian invasion force is backtracking

The Russian command is at last indirectly acknowledging what we have all been witnessing for the last four weeks: the massive push to occupy the whole country and seize all the major cities has totally failed. So now the objectives of the war have been cut back to grabbing the Donbas region in the east and turning it into a Russian enclave. Does this mean Putin, or at least, his generals, have given up the dream of capturing Kyiv and planting a stooge as head of the government? Surely the answer must be yes. The Russian commanders are claiming they have succeeded with the first phase of their invasion and can now concentrate on the eastern part of the country which Putin wants to be pure Russian - presumably he has ethnic cleansing in mind. But how can the generals claim the first phase was a success unless by that they mean the almost total destruction of Mariupol? How could that ever be considered a victory for Russia, especially as the courageous Ukrainian fighters left in the ruins of the city are refusing to surrender? Russia's first phase demonstrated everything that was wrong about the invasion, in terms of military capability. It has been a disastrous campaign for Moscow and now the generals on the ground are effectively agreeing. I have no doubt that if they do now concentrate on the Donbas region they will find a totally different type of Ukrainian resistance which could see the Russian forces smothered and even defeated. Let us hope so.

All the talk is now about nuclear

The world’s two biggest nuclear powers have become embroiled in a war of words about the unthinkable. For 77 years, following America’s dropping of atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, nuclear deterrence and the concept of mutual assured destruction has held sway between the superpowers. The Cold War never went nuclear. Vladimir Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov stated overnight that Russia would only use nuclear weapons if the country faced an “existential threat”. While this remark appeared to row back on the alarmist order from Putin four weeks ago to put Russia’s nuclear weapons on high alert, Peskov was responding to a reporter’s question solely on the issue of potential nuclear exchanges between the US and Russia. He was effectively restating the nuclear threshold concept largely adopted by all those in the atomic weapons club. Nevertheless, the Pentagon felt it was appropriate to accuse Moscow of “dangerous” rhetoric. When Putin raised Russia’s nuclear alert status, the US deliberately avoided following suit for fear of escalating tensions. Only in January, leaders of the five nuclear weapons states, US, Russia, China, UK and France, issued a joint statement about the need to prevent nuclear war. “We affirm that a nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought,” the statement said. However, the US has been watching for any unusual Russian nuclear weapons activity with dedicated spy satellites. One member of the five-nation nuclear club, France, appears to have taken an extraordinarily cautious and unprecedented approach by deploying three of its four Triomphant-class nuclear ballistic-missile submarines on patrol. Normally, like the UK, there would only be one such submarine operating at any one time, although France deployed two in 1981 during the crisis over the Soviet deployment of SS-20 intermediate-range nuclear missiles targeting Europe. The reasoning behind the French move is not unrealistic. Since the Russian invasion of Ukraine began on February 24, Putin has rapidly resorted to using every long-range weapon at his disposal as his ground forces faced daily setbacks. Conventionally-armed mobile ballistic missiles, 30-mile-range artillery, land-attack cruise missiles fired from warships in the Black Sea, and then a single hypersonic Kinzhal (Dagger) missile, launched for no apparent tactical reason other than to show off Moscow’s arsenal of weapons. The West’s finest Kremlinologists, including William Burns, the CIA director and former US ambassador in Moscow, have warned that Putin is angry, isolated and functioning emotionally, not the best frame of mind to make logical decisions about which weapons to turn to next. This is why President Biden has revealed US intelligence assessments that the Russian leader might resort to chemical or biological weapons. The nuclear option is next in line and, compared with the checks and balances surrounding the launch of American, British and French nuclear weapons, Putin is largely unrestrained from authorising their use. Peskov said a world nuclear war would only begin if Russia’s existence was threatened. But Putin might still make the decision to use tactical low-yield nuclear weapons, a tenth the size of the Hiroshima bomb, in Ukraine. Russia has around 2,000 of these weapons. Putin might calculate that such weapons used in a limited, albeit devastatingly destructive, strike, would not lead to the Third World (and nuclear) War.

Does Putin know how badly the war is going?

No one really knows but it's reported Vladimir Putin spends his time locked away in a deep bunker while the war he started rages in Ukraine. So the big question is: is anyone telling him the truth about the disastrous logistics problems suffered by the invasion army, the pathetic failure to achieve air superiority, the loss of maybe 10,000 Russian soldiers, the killing of up to 15 senior commanders and the sheer heroism of the Ukrainian fighters? Are his closest officials daring to tell him all the things that have gone wrong? All we hear from Putin is that everything is going according to his grand plan but like all the other lies he has uttered before and since the invasion began, the whole world knows that is not the case. In fact quite the reverse. And now it seems Sergey Shoigu, the concrete-faced defence minister, has vanished from sight. Has he been banished for the failures or is he feeling ill after a series of roastings from his commander-in-chief? Putin must be spitting mad if he HAS been told the truth about his war but the chances are he has been given a rosy picture of the progresss. I can't imagine Putin is watching CNN every day, like Saddam Hussein did in the 1991 Gulf War. So all he is getting is a skewed version of what is going on in Ukraine. In fact the same sort of propaganda bilge the Russian people are watching on state television every day. Saddam Hussein ended up in a deep hole in the ground after the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003. Let us hope that Putin eventually emerges from his hole in the ground, defeated and abandoned by his KGB cohorts.

Would Putin's use of chemical weapons in Ukraine be Nato's red line?

President Biden and others have been warning that in his desperation to scare Ukrainian people into submission Putin might turn to chemical weapons to flush them out of their bunkers and basements. But then what? Would this be Biden's red line, just as it was Barack Obama's supposed red line for President Assad in Syria? So much more is at stake this time. If Obama had gone ahead with bombing Syrian chemical weapons plants to bits, the world would not have come to an end, and Assad and his Moscow backer Vladimir Putin would have got the message. In the end of course, the Rusians saved Obama from bombing. Sergey Lavrov, the lugubrious Russian foreign minister who we now know is almost as much of an ogre as his Kremlin boss, stepped in and said Russia would see to it that all of Syria's chemical weapons stocks were removed and destroyed. A brilliant move by Moscow because it put Russia in a good light and showed Obama, who seized on the offer, to be weak. His red line was not really a red line. The Russians masterminded the chemical weapons elimination and made sure there were some stocks stashed away for future use. Now, according to Biden, Putin is contemplating launching chemical strikes in Ukraine. What Biden didn't say is that if Putin did turn to chemical or biological weapons that would be a red line for him and he would authorise the bombing of Russian chemical weapons factories. He won't do that of course because it would mean Nato and Russia would be at war. So Putin who calculates everything like a master poker player will probably think he will get away with using chemical and biological weapons - and even nuclear - because Nato will be too afraid to retaliate with a military strike. Just more sanctions, he will think, and a further deterioration of relations with the western world. But he doesn't seem to care about that. There would be more calls for him to be charged as a war criminal, but Putin isn't going to end up in the war crimes tribunal because he will just stay in his bunker under the Kremlin and refuse to come out. Perhaps if investigators can track down his superyacht and instead of seizing it, just blow it up, that might persuade him to give up the fight. But I doubt it.

China's weapons islands in South China Sea

At least three artificially-built islands in the South China Sea have now been fully militarised by Beijing, presenting a heavily weaponised battle line more than 1,000 miles from the Chinese coast, the US Indo-Pacific commander has disclosed. The reefs converted into bases in the Spratly Islands archipelago are bristling with anti-aircraft and anti-ship missiles, as well as fighter aircraft, Admiral John Aquilino told Associated Press reporters while flying in a P-8A Poseidon reconnaissance aircraft over the area. The admiral said the militarisation of the reef islands had gone ahead despite pledges from Beijing that they had no plans to do so. In 2015 President Xi Zinping denied there were any moves to establish military strongholds on the artificial islands. Referring to the Spratly Islands, the Chinese leader said then: “Relevant construction activity that China is undertaking does not target or impact any country and there is no intention to militarise.” Aquilino who took over as commander of US Indo-Pacific Command in May last year, accused China of engaging over the last two decades in “the largest military build-up since World War II”. Three of the completed artificially-built bases at Subi Reef, Mischief Reef and Fiery Cross Reef, formerly rocks in the Spratly Islands, are packed with multi-storey buildings, hangars, warehouses, runways, seaports and white-domed radars. At Fiery Cross there were more than 40 vessels anchored. “The function of those islands is to expand the offensive capability of the PRC [People’s Republic of China] beyond their continental shores,” Aquilino said. “They can fly fighters, bombers, plus all those offensive capabilities of missile systems,” he said. “That’s the threat that exists, that’s why it’s so concerning for the militarisation of these islands. They threaten all nations who operate in the vicinity and all the international sea and airspace,” Aquilino said. China claims sovereignty of all islands and reefs in the South China Sea. Beijing which began constructing bases on coral atolls in the sea about ten years ago, disputes rival sovereignty claims made by other countries in the region: Vietnam, the Philippines, Malaysia, Taiwan and Brunei. The US rejects China’s sovereignty claims as unlawful and has frequently warned Beijing against threatening nations using the international waterway as a trading route for an annual $5 trillion’s worth of goods. To back up the right of access for ships and aircraft in the South China Sea, the US has adopted a robust naval presence in the region. In January two US carrier strike groups, led by USS Carl Vinson and USS Abraham Lincoln, carried out maritime exercises in the area. During the US Navy Poseidon flight close to the artificial islands, it received a number of Chinese radio calls warning that the aircraft had illegally entered China’s territory. One message said: “China has sovereignty over the Spratly Islands as well as surrounding maritime areas. Stay away immediately to avoid misjudgment.” The crew ignored the warning and continued with the mission, radioing back that the aircraft was conducting “lawful military activities beyond the national airspace of any coastal state”.

Volodymyr Zelensky has the world on his shoulders

Everyone except the Russians and possibly the Chinese wants President Zelensky to be the victor in this terrible war between Russia and Ukraine. Could Ukraine defeat the Russian army? It can't be ruled out because so far the supposedly superpower Russian military have proved themselves to be not up to scratch. Nato could beat them out of their skins. Ukraine is doing a pretty good job of it, and it looks increasingly unlikely that Russia will succeed in capturing Kyiv. The capital is a fortress and the Russians just don't have the logistical back-up to settle in for a long siege. So unless Putin orders the invasion force to destroy Kyiv like they have destroyed Mariupol, then Kyiv will survive and so will Zelensky. Literally the whole world is listening to Zelensky's every word and as every day goes by his oratory gets more refined, more Churchillian, more eloquent and more pointed. Why, he keeps on asking, are he and his country being left to take on the might of the Russian Bear? Thanks for the weapons and pre-invasion Nato training, he acknowledges, but the fight, the real fight, is all down to the Ukrainians. When the invasion was launched I suspect most of the top officials in the Biden administration imagined, like Putin did himself, that it would all be over pretty quickly and that Zelensky would either be captured or killed. Today, a month later, Zelensky in his combat-style clothes is the standard bearer for democracy and freedom. How long can he carry on? Is it possible Ukraine could drive Russia to an ignominious defeat? The trouble is, I'm not sure which scenario is the more dangerous for the whole world, a victorious Putin or a defeated Putin.

The moral argument for lethal weapons

The moral argument against sales of lethal weapons overseas has been turned on its head with the invasion by Russia of Ukraine. Since the eruption of war, the raison d’etre for the West’s arming of the Ukrainian military has been simple: to enable the Kyiv government to defend the country and its citizens against the Russian invaders. So it's a justified and noble effort to protect the weaker of the two protagonists without actually getting involved as a direct participant. No wonder the anti-arms trade campaigners have been so quiet since the war began. Selling arms is big business and there are arguments both ways on whether this global trade in weapons plays a role in creating greater stability or inflaming a dangerous and volatile situation. It comes down to selling arms to the good guys or the bad guys. Unquestionably, the Ukrainians are regarded by most countries as the good guys who need help to survive against a military superpower armed with superior weapons. As a result, the US and 14 other nations have been pouring weapons into Ukraine, notably anti-tank and anti-aircraft systems. Without them, the Ukrainian forces would have been overwhelmed. With them, they have been able to destroy significant numbers of Russian tanks, fighter aircraft and helicopters. Nato has applauded. The most recent comparison on the other side of the moral argument was the sale of air-launched missiles to Saudi Arabia by the US and UK which have been used against Iran-backed Houthi rebels in the long-running war in Yemen. Until Russia invaded Ukraine, war-torn Yemen was the world’s worst humanitarian catastrophe. About a quarter of a million people have been killed in the Yemen war since it started eight years ago, and American and British weapons have been partly to blame for the appalling slaughter. There was little moral justification this time. President Biden has withdrawn US support for offensive operations in Yemen but has yet to stop missile sales. The UK has sold weapons worth £8.4 billion to the Saudi-led coalition against the Houthis since the bombing attacks began in 2015. The rush of western weapons to Ukraine has not stopped the war or stemmed the violence. Indeed it can be argued that they have generated more violence and possibly even prolonged the war. But the cause is a noble one, and it has been Nato’s only option bar joining the fight against Russia. However, there is one worrying scenario. Vladimir Putin has already said that the West’s sanctions against Russia are almost an act of war. Moscow has also warned that Nato’s arms convoys into Ukraine would be a legitimate target for attack. What if Putin decides that the supply of weapons which are undermining his invasion plans and helping Ukraine’s resistance is tantamount to a declaration of war?

Time to get tougher with Putin

Despite all the weapons provided by the US and the rest of Nato and the huge losses suffered by the Russian troops, Vladimir Putin is still pursuing his war as if he cares not a jot about the thousands of his soldiers who have been killed, anything between 7,000 and 10,000. There is no way Putin is in a compromising mood. He will go on and on until he gets what he wants and will then start thinking of what to do next. This 21st century Hitler act-alike has to be stopped. It's time I fear for Nato to get tougher. I don't mean declare war. But the alliance now needs to send even more fighter aircraft and missiles to eastern Europe to be ready to strike at Russian targets in Ukraine in the event of any move by Putin to extend his aggression towards the Baltics or Poland. Putin may be thinking that he can get away with pushing his luck by sending a fighter plane or armed drone into Nato territory, believing that Joe Biden might be reluctant to retaliate for fear of it leading to the Third World War. The fact is that Putin cannot possibly want a full war in Europe with Nato because he would lose, so if he dares to order a strike of any kind against Nato territory, Biden and the whole alliance must respond with instant retaliation. President Zelensky of Ukraine and columnists in US papers are saying the Third World War has probably already started. But my conviction that this is wrong is based on what we know about Putin. He did not invade Georgia, Crimea, eastern Ukraine and now the whole of Ukraine in order to fight a full-scale war with Nato that would lead inevitably to a nuclear exchange. He did all these things because he thought, rightly in the case of Georgia, Crimea and eastern Ukraine, that he could get away with it without causing a Third World War. This time it's different. He knows that Biden and Nato will fight him if he sends any of his military forces into Nato's eastern flank. Putin does not want a Third World War. This is why Nato needs to send him an ultimatum. The destruction of Ukraine has to stop or every MiG-29 in the Polish air force will be sent to Ukraine. In other words, Biden has to change his mind. Remember, Mr President, Putin will be terrified of causing a Third World War.

Could Putin turn in desperation to tactical nukes?

I doubt Vladimir Putin is going to settle for a long drawn-out war in Ukraine, draining Russia's dwindling resources and provoking the wrath of angry mothers and wives of those killed in battle. The longer it goes on the more weapons will arrive from the West for the Ukrainian army and the greater the resistance. A vicious circle for the man in the Kremlin. So could Putin remind his generals that Russia's military doctrine allows for, even authorises, the use of tactical nuclear weapons on the battlefield. Putin some time ago ordered Russia's nuclear forces to be on higher alert but that was as a warning signal to Nato to steer clear of involvement in his war. It was intended to be a reminder to the western alliance and mainly to the US that he was the leader of a nuclear-weapons state and that he could push the button to annihilate the planet if he so wished. The US took notice but decided not to do likewise for fear of escalating the already dangerous tension. Now we're talking about battlefield nukes, in other words, short-range weapons with an explosive yield probably about a tenth of the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. But devastating nevertheless, guaranteeing thousands of deaths and unbelievable blast effect on buildings. The use of such weapons would be such a shock to the whole world that not only would it bring the brave Ukrainian resstance to an end but it would present President Biden, as the leader of Nato, with the most cataclysmic decision since President Truman's order to hit Japan with two nuclear bombs in August 1945. Putin would make the calculation that even in such dire circumstances, Biden would not rush into the Third World War with multiple nuclear strikes against Moscow but would opt for lower-down-the-scale military retaliation. Anything but nuclear. Putin, I'm thinking, would feel he had got away with it and with the world stunned into shocked bewilderment he would force Kyiv to surrender and wrap up his invasion strategy as quickly as possible. It's a scenario that we all believed was totally out of the question but, I fear, no longer.

Can Putin count on Xi Zinping?

What is really going on between Vladimir Putin and his Chinese buddy Xi Zinping? Based on what Jake Sullivan, US National Security Adviser, has been saying, Putin has been begging Xi for some Chinese armed drones. This is extraordinary. Surely Putin and his generals must have done enough preplanning to assess whether they had enough weapons to mount the invasion of Ukraine? Do the Russians seriously have such limited supplies of drones that they needed to turn to China for help? Or is it all about getting Beijing on side by offering lots of useless roubles to pay for drones to show to the US and Nato that if there is going to be a big fight between Russia and the western alliance, Putin can depend on his mate in Beijing to provide military assistance. Russia and China versus the Nato alliance. Whatever Putin is up to he is surely not going to succeed in getting the Chinese leader to pledge a joint military effort against Nato? China has long-term ambitions not just to dominate the Indo-China region but to push the US down the global-pecking order - and of course grab Taiwan back in due course, whether by persuasion or force. So the last thing Xi needs right now is involvement in a full-scale war with Nato which either the Putin/Xi axis will lose or it will turn to nuclear war which would be the end of all Xi's dreams and pretty well the end of the world. Xi wants power on his own, not power shared with Putin. So surely if there is any danger of a world or world-light war, Beijing is going to get on the phone to Moscow - do they have a special hotline? - and tell Putin to calm down. Jake Sullivan has issued a warning to Beijing not to get involved in the war in Ukraine or face sanctions. That would include selling armed drones to Putin. So although Beijing won't like being told what to do or what not to do by Washington, I suspect China will get the message and will play this dangerous war game very carefully: play footsie with Putin but without embracing him with open arms (pun intended).

Putin is going for Nato

The worst is yet to come. After 17 days of war in which the Russian forces stumbled and failed to complete the strategic objectives outlined by their Kremlin bosses, Vladimir Putin’s invasion troops are turning to a different scale of brutality. Despite predictions of an early shock-and-awe advance to Kyiv, similar to the US armoured drive to Baghdad in the 2003 Iraq war (achieved incidentally in exactly 17 days), the Russians left Kyiv marginally untouched while they aimed their main focus elsewhere. It is possible, seeing it from a purely Russian military viewpoint, to imagine that the attacks on the cities of Kharkiv, Mariupol, Mykolaiv and Kherson were all partly aimed at terrorising the citizens of Kyiv into submission before their troops, tanks and long-range artillery arrived at the capital. However, in the process, the Russian military has demonstrated its weaknesses – and Ukraine’s strengths. Logistic back-up has always been the Russian army’s Achilles heel. Add to that the involvement of conscripts who appear ignorant of Putin’s war objectives and the failure to win air superiority, the dismal performance of Russia’s supposedly top-tier battalion tactical groups, designed to bring mass combat power into a conflict zone, is there for all to see. So tactically and strategically the Russian armed forces have shown, at least to ever-watching US military chiefs, that they are not on an equal footing with America’s combat capabilities. This is why the Russian invaders are resorting to increasingly ferocious warfare tactics that do not take into account what Nato refers to as collateral damage: the killing of civilians and the destruction of private property. This is part of Russia’s military doctrine, and the brutal siege tactics used against other Ukrainian cities over the last 17 days will now be brought to bear on an even greater scale on the capital. The Russians have self-propelled artillery systems with ranges of up to 30 miles, as well as Iskander ballistic missile launchers within easy reach of Kyiv. If there is a delay in what is expected to be a relentless assault on the capital it will only be because of orders from commanders to wait until fuel and food supplies are in position. The Russian military will use the offer of ceasefires, not as a gesture of peace or humanitarian concern, but as a way of regrouping for the siege of Kyiv. Based on their failure to secure air superiority so far -in Nato doctrine always a priority war objective - there is no reason to suppose that Russian fighter aircraft will achieve this in the next few weeks. As a consequence, Nato’s weapons-supply convoys crossing from Poland and elsewhere into western Ukraine are bound to be subjected to ballistic-missile and aerial bombing. The Russian missile attack on the Ukrainian military training base at Yavoriv, near the border with Poland. Is a harbinger of what is to come. Russia’s military tactics have been undermined from the first day because of the anti-tank and anti-air weapons supplied by the US and 14 other countries. Putin now seems bent on retaliation against Nato.

Putin pins all his hopes on Kyiv falling

I don't know whether Putin seriously thought he could invade and overwhelm Ukraine in a matter of days but in the third week of the war there is now little doubt that he is pinning all his hopes on grabbing Kyiv. But then what? Does he put some nonentity into the presidential chair, believing that he can control the whole of Ukraine for ever? That was tried by the Russians in Afghanistan in the 1980s and it ended in bitter failure. Or does Putin think that with Ukraine under his belt he can march into Moldova and grab another country for his revitalised empire dreams? To contain Ukraine post-war Putin will need a huge army in-country and a military budget that patently he will not be able to afford whatever the price of oil and gas. So venturing further into Moldova would be suicidal both for Putin and for the future of Russia. But Putin has aleady demonstrated that he is not the great strategist he believes he is. He miscalculated pretty well everything in his planning for the invasion of Ukraine. He underestimated Ukraine's powers of resistance, he doubted the US and Europe would mount such a united sanctions regime against him and his cronies, he never took properly into account how western arms deliveries into Ukraine would literally stop his invading forces in their tracks, and he never believed that any country would dare to stop taking oil imports from Russia. The US and Britain are now in the process of doing so. So Putin is trapped in Ukraine. He is never going to get the victory he had hoped for and even if he takes Kyiv he will only do so by launching an artillery bombardment that will destroy the city. It wouldn't even be a hollow victory because it would provoke years of insurgency that would exhaust his army and cripple Russia's already failing economy. Putin is therefore facing the sort of defeat in Ukraine which hopefully will rouse the Russian parliament, Russian people and Russian generals to frogmarch him out of the Kremlin into a disgraceful retirement. Or worse.

Will Putin's generals eventually deliver?

After two weeks anyone in the know, espeially in Russia, will have concluded that the war in Ukraine has not gone according to the Kremlin pan. The Ukrainian forces plus armed citizens have fought a helluva lot harder than Putin and hs cohorts ever imagined. The statistics of the war must make gruesome reading in Moscow. Maybe 10,000 dead Russian soldiers and hundreds of tanks, armoured personnel carriers, fighter aircraft and helicopters destroyed. Reports claim a number of Russian generals have been fired back in Moscow. And several of the highest-ranking commanders in charge in Ukraine have been killed. On the other side of the war balance, if you are inside Putin's mind, Ukrainian cities have been battered, Ukrainian civilians have been killed and injured, two million have left their homes to join the refugee evacuation to bordering countries and Ukraine, mostly in the east and south, has been terrorised, lives ruined for ever. Putin would consider that half of the statistical balance progress. Now I fear he is going to step up the war to a scale we have not yet witnessed. The generals under his command are on notice to bring Ukraine's head on a plate, and that means the destruction and seizure of Kyiv and the removal, one way or the other, of this turbulent comedian president - to plaguarise the words of King Henry 11 when he wished for the elimination of the turbulent priest, Sir Thomas Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury, in 1170. There are already signs that this is what the Russian commanders are now trying to do. Overnight the much-reported convoy of armoured vehicles and supply vehicles north of Kyiv has split up and moved to positions to begin the siege of the capital. Artillery is in place for bombardment. Putin is angry. The next phase of this war is going to be much worse. Putin is determined to win by destruction and this is what we are going to see on a much larger scale in the next few weeks. Putin's generals I fear will deliver what he wants.

Sergey Lavrov will get his comeuppance, along with Vladimir Putin

Sergey Lavrov is looking more and more like his sombre-faced Cold War predecessor as Russian foreign minister, the Nyet man Andrei Gromyko. Sour-mouthed, heavy cheeks, and lying whenever he opened his lips to speak, Lavrov had the cheek today to announce to the world in a press conference after his abortive meeting with the Ukrainian foreign minister in Turkey that Russia would withstand all the West's sanctions and would come out even better because there would be no reliance on anything to do with the West. He probably had McDonald's in mind. What a dreadful man he has become, Russia's top non-diplomat. All he did during the meeting in Turkey was repeat endlessly the demands of his boss, Vladimir Putin, that Ukraine should disarm, become neutral and give up any idea of joining Nato. In fact President Zelensky of Ukraine has already indicated that he will probably not pursue alliance membership for his country, partly through being disillusioned by Nato's refusal to fight by his troops'side. But Lavrov is either behind the times or is not satisfied with Zelenksy's musings. Lavrov is the ultimate Putin poodle official, once a man with a sense of humour but no longer. He has become rock-solid Putinised. When asked about the Russian bombing of a maternity hospital in Mariupol in which three people including a child were killed and 17 injured, Lavrov merely replied that the hospital was full of Ukrainian troops. That old excuse for barbarity. Well, when this is all over, one way or the other, Lavrov will get his comeuppance. So, too, Putin. They cannot be allowed to win any sort of victory in Ukraine or to enjoy the fruits of their murderous invasion. Just the thought of seeing Putin's blotched face at The Hague war crimes tribunal with smudge-faced Lavrov standing next to him gives me hope for the future. As we have learned so many times in history, evil cannot be allowed to go unpunished.

US Navy caught in Catch-22 court battle over warship skipper

A US guided-missile destroyer has been prevented from deploying on an overseas mission because of a court battle over its commanding officer after he refused to have a coronavirus vaccination. In a legal impasse described by Pentagon officials in court evidence as a “manifest national security concern”, the US Navy has been told by a federal judge that it cannot fire the commanding officer who has served for nearly 18 years. Unable to remove him from command or replace him with another officer of the same rank, the navy has had to keep the Arleigh Burke-class warship docked at the Norfolk naval base in Virginia. The navy has not named either the commanding officer or the ship. The guided-missile destroyer is one of 68 of this class which are playing an increasingly crucial role in the Indo-Pacific and also currently in the eastern Mediterranean. The commanding officer refused to be vaccinated on religious grounds. His application for exemption was rejected by navy chiefs. His superiors subsequently lost confidence in his ability to command the ship because of an incident in which he was accused of putting other crew members at risk. Court documents show that he boarded the warship before it was due to leave on an exercise and could hardly speak when addressing up to 60 members of the crew. Captain Frank Brandon, his superior officer, ordered him to take a Covid test when he admitted he had a sore throat. The test was positive. In another incident, the commanding officer left the Norfolk base to pursue his legal case against the navy without telling Brandon. “My loss of confidence is not based on his vaccination status or his denied request for a religious exemption. It is based on the fact that I cannot trust his judgment, I cannot trust him to look after the welfare of his sailors and I cannot trust him to be honest with me,” Brandon wrote in a report to the district court in Florida. However, Judge Steven Merryday ruled that the navy could neither demote nor reassign the commanding officer of the destroyer. The officer’s counsel had said the case was about his constitutional and religious freedom rights. US government court filings stated the injunction served on the navy was “an extraordinary intrusion upon the inner workings of the military”. As a consequence the navy was now short of a warship, the documents said. Further legal steps are to be taken by the navy’s lawyers.

Is Putin seething with anger or remaining patient?

The war in Ukraine is not going well so far for the Russians, according to all the experts. In fact it's a tactical mess and how on earth the Russian air force doesn't already have air superiority I find difficult to understand. The Ukrainians have been brilliant in contesting the skies, both with their own Soviet-made MiGs and Sukhois and surface-to-air missiles. But the Russians have far more combat aircraft and you would have thought by now they would have eliminated the ground and air defence systems to enable them to rule the skies. But they have failed to do this. So will Vladimir Putin in his Kremlin bunker be seething with fury that so many things seem to have gone wrong or will he be patient, knowing that eventually he still has a good chance of defeating Ukrainian resistance? My only answer to that is that I wouldn't want to be Sergei Shoigu, the Russian defence minister, or General Valery Gerasimov, the chief of the general staff, right now. Surely they must be getting the heavy, glassy stares from their boss by now. "What the hell is going on?" Or in Russian: "Chto chert voz'mi proiskhodit?" He would have wanted the whole "special military action" wrapped up by now. Nearly two weeks have gone by and the Russian troops are making heavy weather of the invasion. They don't seem to know in which direction to go next and now they are resorting to the one thing they know best, launching an artillery bombardment from a long way off at city centres. As nearly the whole world cuts Russia off from trade, financial dealings and cultural/sporting events, Putin will want more than ever to get Kyiv taken and controlled and see what impact that has on resistance elsewhere in the country. But that 40-mile convoy, mostly consisting of petrol, ammo and food supply vehicles, is still stuck about 17 miles north of Kyiv and hasn't moved for days. Meanwhile it's being targeted by Ukrainian armed drones and aircraft when they can get through. Yes I think Putin will be getting angry and worried. If he gets battled into a corner might he turn to the one weapon he knows the whole world will fear and dread? Is he mad enough to launch a nuclear weapon? That will be Shoigu's and Gerasimov's greatest test. They are both in the chain of command for a nuclear strike. Would they dare to say "Nyet"?

Putin's next moves could lead to clashes with Nato

The first US Army Abrams battle tanks entered Baghdad 17 days after the American-led invasion of Iraq began on March 19, 2003. Leaving the British 1st Armoured Division to seize and occupy the southern city of Basra, American soldiers and Marines in armoured personnel carriers and tanks powered their way to the capital, bypassing other potential urban targets to reach the seat of power to topple Saddam Hussein. President Putin will have studied the rapid advance of America’s fighting troops, led by the US 3rd Infantry Division, when assessing the options for invading Ukraine. However, Kyiv, the capital and beating heart of Ukraine’s resistance, has yet to feel the full combat power of the Russian invading forces. What will be Putin’s next moves on the battlefield? *Kyiv has to remain his priority target. Apart from indiscriminate shelling and sabotage missions by Spetsnaz special forces in the capital , the bulk of the Russian troops so far have been distracted, and effectively opposed, while launching multiple strike missions in other parts of the country. This has included seizing the towns of Berdyansk and Enerhodar in the southeast, and attacking the Black Sea port of Kherson, Kharkiv in the northeast, Mykolaiv in the south and Mariupol on the north coast of the Sea of Azov. With Russian air power having failed so far to make a significant impact in the war, partly through the shooting down of numerous fighter jets and helicopters, it’s likely Putin’s generals will turn to long-range artillery bombardment to try and defeat the willpower of the capital’s defenders. The Russian military has a long history of resorting to artillery to break down resistance in besieged cities. If this is to be the next phase of the war, Kyiv will be subjected to intensive shelling. The Russian military has at its disposal a massed array of howitzers which include the Pion self-propelled 203mm artillery piece with a range of around 30 miles. In addition, the Ukrainian general staff has claimed the Russians are setting up a forward base for attack helicopters near Ivankiv, about 45 miles northwest of Kyiv. This suggests preparations for the expected multiple-point assault on the capital are continuing, albeit slowly at present. *Odessa, the biggest port on the Black Sea, also has to be on Putin’s priority list. Thousands of Russian naval infantry troops are already on board amphibious landing ships in the Black Sea and appear to be poised to launch an operation on Odessa, perhaps this week. Elements of the Russian 810th Naval Infantry Brigade were also spotted loading onto large amphibious ships on the west coast of the Crimean peninsula over the weekend. *Seizing Ukraine’s power plants: Russian forces have been seen advancing north towards the Kaniv hydro-electric power plant which is about 100 miles south of Kyiv, and key to providing energy supplies to the region. Putin has already shown that he wants his troops to gain control of Ukraine’s critical infrastructure. Russian forces last week took over Ukraine’s largest nuclear power station in Zaporizhzhia in the south. *The possible targeting of Nato’s arms supply line into Ukraine from Poland. This would be a high-risk move because of the potential for clashes between Russian and Nato fighter jets which are operating close to the Ukrainian border. However, Putin’s war plans have been severely undermined by the flow of Nato anti-tank and anti-air shoulder-launched missile systems that have arrived in transport convoys from Poland and other alliance countries bordering Ukraine. The longer the war goes on the better armed will be the Ukrainian military who have already demonstrated the effectiveness of the easy-to-use and deadly accurate weapon systems. Putin has said the sanctions imposed by the West are tantamount to a declaration of war against Russia. The flow of arms, and the supply of real-time intelligence provided by US spy satellites and surveillance aircraft, manned and unmanned, operating in the region, may also be viewed by the Russian leader as acts of war. If Russian troops begin large-scale operations in western Ukraine which borders four Nato countries – Poland, Slovakia, Hungary and Romania – the risk of aerial confrontation will increase significantly. So far the convoys of weapons have been crossing the border with impunity. US European Command under General Tod Wolters who is also Nato’s supreme allied commander, is masterminding the shipments of arms from 14 countries. A “deconfliction channel”, consisting basically of an open phone line, exists between the US European Command headquarters in Stuttgart and the Russian military. A US official said the Russians know of its existence because they answered the phone when it rang.

How is the war in Ukraine going to end?

Judging by what Putin has been saying he has no intention of stopping the war in Ukraine until he has got total victory. Antony Blinken, US secretary of state, on the other hand, believes that there is a very good chance Russia will be defeated by the doughty Ukrainians. Probably neither of these two projections will be achievable. There is no such thing as total victory, unless Putin seriously sets about destroying every city the way he destroyed Grozny, the capital of Chechnya, in 1999. And what would be the purpose of that? Ukraine would be a destroyed satellite state filled with surviving Ukrainians seeking forever revenge against their occupiers. Putin hopes that that the Ukrainian resistance will eventually fail and for the sake of people's lives and homes the Kyiv government will surrender to the will of the Russian army and stop fighting. As of now there seems to be a very small chance of that happening. So Putin's plan for a swift victory will be like America's dream of a rapid subjugation of Iraq in 2003, or, indeed, the vision of creating democracy and freedom for the Afghan people after the toppling of the Taliban in 2001. In Afghanistan it took 20 years for the US and its allied partners to realise that victory against the Taliban was impossible and there was, simply, nothing more they could do. The dream became an absymal failure when the Taliban regained power in August 2021 and went back to their Medieval ways. In Iraq, the short-lived victory sporned a brutal insurgency war that went on and on and on and metamorphosed into an even more brutal battle with the Islamic state. Tens of thousands of civilians died in the long process. I predict there will be no swift victory for Putin in Ukraine. But will the Ukrainian resistance become so effective that the Russian army could be defeated and sent home, like the US-led coalition was in Afghanistan, and, indeed, like the Russian army was from the same country in the 1980s? The reality is that neither Putin nor Blinken will prove to be right. Russia will not win a military victory but neither will the Ukrainian forces defeat the Russians. It will turn into a bloodbath stalemate that will go on for months if not years. If that happens, it might just prove the end of Putin and his KGB cohorts. But how many people will die before that happens? Putin's legacy is and will always be soaked in blood, just like Stalin's, and Hitler's.

Ukraine scuttles its only decent warship

Ukraine has deliberately scuttled its flagship frigate to prevent the Russians from seizing it as a war trophy. The commanding officer of the Hetman Sagaydachny, a 3,100-ton Krivak III-class frigate , received orders to sink the ship, as Russian amphibious forces appeared poised to carry out an assault on the main Black Sea port of Odessa. The 30-year-old frigate now lies half-submerged in the port of Nikolaev, about 80 miles from Odessa. In an emotional Facebook message, Oleksiy Reznikov, the Ukrainian defence minister, said: “The commander of the flagman [sic]of the military ordered to flood the ship so that the Hetman Sagaydachny frigate which was under repair, did not reach the enemy.” “It’s hard to imagine a more difficult decision for a brave warrior and the entire team. But we’re building a new fleet. The modern, the powerful. The main thing now is to stand up,” he said. Urging Ukrainians to continue resisting the Russian invading force, the defence minister said the “enemy is confused and intimidated” and claimed “the Kremlin rats are already trembling”. The Hetman Sagaydachny was the sole frigate of the Ukrainian navy. After the Russia annexation of Crimea in 2014, Ukraine not only lost its main naval base at Sevastopol but also 12 of its 17 principal combat warships. The frigate with its 100m deck gun, anti-submarine grenade launchers, torpedo tubes and a helicopter, was the pride of the Ukrainian navy. The other ships that survived the annexing of Crimea included a landing ship, an inshore minesweeper, a support ship and a few auxiliaries. Since 2014 the Ukrainian navy had added seven home-produced patrol craft. The defence minister’s comment about Ukraine building a new navy was a reference to the purchase of Island-class patrol boats from the US and two Sandown-class minehunters from the UK. Ukraine also signed a $236 million contract in December, 2020, to buy two Ada-class corvettes from Turkey. The first corvette was due to have been delivered by the end of next year.

Nato is united but Putin doesn't seem to care

President Biden declared in his State of the Union address that Putin must have got a shock because rather than dividing the alliance with his invasion of Ukraine, it is now more united than ever. But united for what? Ok, alliance members are sending weapons to help Ukraine resist the Russian invaders and, as Biden said, are seeking out all the superyachts and fancy houses Putin's billionaire oligarch friends have around the world. But the war in Ukraine goes on relentlessly and more brutally as each day passes. I am sure the oligarch pals will be furious with Putin but they won't dare say so. The problem is that as the whole world, give or take a few countries, condemns this war, Putin is just not listening. He has retreated into a bubble of paranoia and won't even bother to take on board the impact he has had in destroying whatever reputation Russia had pre-invasion in the international community. He is advised by stoney-faced generals and spy chiefs who are suffering from the same paranoia. Sergey Lavrov, the foreign minister, used to have a touch of charm and wit about him but no longer. He, too, has sunk into this abyss of hatred and revenge. Their paranoia poses a mighty danger to the whole world and right now I see no solution. Putin is never going to come to his senses even as the ruble loses all value because he wants Ukraine and he is determined to get it however many Russian troops and Ukrainian civilians and troops die in the process. There is a long war ahead.

Why has Russia held back from massive cyber attacks?

Russia has so far held back from launching a full-scale cyber war campaign to cripple Ukraine’s critical infrastructure, against all pre-invasion predictions by western intelligence and defence officials. Despite numerous “harassment” cyber attacks by Russia, Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky and his military commanders have still been able to communicate effectively and rouse the population to take up arms against the Russian troops. The Russian GRU military intelligence agency has the capability to bring down Ukraine’s power grid, telecommunications network and transport systems. GRU’s cyber warfare specialists could turn the lights out throughout the country and shut down the internet system. But it hasn’t happened. The half-measure cyber attacks and the lack of a full-frontal ballistic-missile, artillery and aerial bombing onslaught against Kyiv and other cities appear to be a deliberate move by Moscow to avoid total destruction of a country which President Putin wants to occupy and control as part of his dream of a revived Russian empire. As the US found in Iraq, destroying power stations, airfields, the electricity grid and other key infrastructure facilities then cost billions of dollars to repair and rebuild when Saddam Hussein had been toppled. “We imagined this orchestrated unleashing of violence in cyberspace, this ballet of attacks striking Ukraine in waves, and instead of that we have a brawl. And not even a very consequential brawl, just yet,” Jason Healey, a former White House director of cyber infrastructure protection, told The Washington Post. James Lewis, a cyber expert at the Washington-based Centre for Strategic and International Studies, told The Times that if it had wanted, Moscow could have “made all bank accounts inaccessible to the Ukrainian people”. “They could disrupt every system and all government services. The GRU is the best in the world in cyber warfare,” he said. As a result of holding back, the Kremlin has lost the first stages of the information/propaganda war. The Ukrainian president has broadcast to the nation every day since the invasion began, and audio clips that have gone viral, such as the one of Ukrainian soldiers telling a Russian warship to “go f... yourself” have symbolised the nation’s fight-back against the invaders. Another possible reason for Moscow’s hesitation to cripple Ukraine’s infrastructure is that some Russian troops seem to be using smart phones which depend on the internet rather than advanced military radio communications, suggesting they might be facing technical difficulties. If the Russian invasion plan becomes bogged down, and Zelensky still manages to stir his citizens to battle, few experts doubt that Moscow could launch the type of cyber war the West had been expecting before the troops and tanks crossed the border. Meanwhile Ukraine has successfully mounted its own counter-cyber campaign, using enthusiastic hackers to breach computer systems in Russia to leave messages calling on Russia to stop the war. Last week NBC reported that President Biden had been presented with options for launching cyber attacks on Russia. However, such a move would be viewed in Moscow as an act of war, and White House officials downplayed the report.

We've got Putin and his paranoia until 2036!

If only this was the last throw of Vladimir Putin. But he has changed the Russian constitution to allow him to be president until 2036 when he will be 84 and probably still going strong although he looks pretty peaky with his bulging, stretched cheeks. He is on a mission and he has the time on his hands to carry on with his vision to shove the West well away from his part of the world and rebuild his empire. He will never be satisfied with grabbing Ukraine. He thinks he has the right and the ability to seize back countries where there are Russian speakers who have betrayed him, yes him, and he will force them back into Russia's sphere of influence one way or the other. This is the view of Fiona Hill, the brilliant Russian expert and former member of the White House National Security Council, in a fascinating but terrifying interview in Politico. Her words need to be read and considered by every leader in Nato and, most importantly, by Joe Biden. She doesn't believe that Putin is going to stop or be stopped from his grand plan and that he will use every weapon at his disposal, even nuclear, to achieve his objectives. He's that dangerous. After all, as she points out, he has already used radioactive Polonium to murder dissident-in-exile and former spy Alexander Litvinenko and turned to a chemical weapon, Novichok, to try and kill former Russian military intelligence officer Sergei Skripal. Will sanctions and a ruined Russian economy stop him? No, very doubtful. Will he just carry on until he has achieved, militarily, what he set out to do six days ago? Absolutely, and right now I can't see how anything or anyone is going to stop him.