21/05/2022
21 May 2022

Zelensky’s choice

21 May 2022

Zelensky’s choice

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James ForsythJames Forsyth
Zelensky’s choice: can Ukraine force Russia to negotiate?

When Russian forces first rolled into Ukraine, most thought that President Zelensky would have to flee. Boris Johnson said Britain could host a Ukrainian government in exile. The Americans offered to get Zelensky out of Kyiv to protect him from the hit squads that Moscow had sent to kill or capture him. Zelensky, with the courage and flair that has defined his war leadership, replied: ‘I need ammunition, not a ride.’ Well, the Ukrainians now have the ammunition – and three months in, the war looks very different to how on 24 February anyone imagined it would.

Zelensky’s choice: can Ukraine force Russia to negotiate?
Ivo Dawnay
It’s time for the chop, Boris

Thinking about it, there is only one thing that my father-in-law Stanley and I really agree about: it’s the hair. His oldest son’s policies, achievements, claims (and other things) strike us both in very different ways: in Stanley’s case with a farmyard cockerel’s swelling red-breasted pride; in mine with a deep-rooted despair of the type the dwellers in the Cities of the Plain must have felt before Jehovah smote them.

It’s time for the chop, Boris
Peter Hitchens
Why is a brilliant BBC serial kept in its most secret vaults?

If someone had managed to bottle the essence of the 1960s – the exciting, adventurous bits – wouldn’t you want to take at least one deep draught? I certainly would. I sometimes long for the power to recreate that odd, dangerous, thrilling time, if only to see if I have got it right in my memory. In fact, they did bottle it. But nobody is allowed to taste the vintage. Well, almost nobody, as we shall see. The BBC possesses, beyond doubt, a full recording of its 13-part 1970 dramatisation of Jean-Paul Sartre’s The Roads to Freedom trilogy.

Why is a brilliant BBC serial kept in its most secret vaults?
Laurie Graham
The pernicious creep of Big Nanny

Waiting at a coach station recently, in the space of seven minutes I was cautioned three times by the disembodied voice of Big Nanny. No smoking or vaping was allowed. Cycling was prohibited. Pedestrians were directed to use only the designated crossings. I almost wished I’d opted to travel by rail, but then I remembered that Big Nanny rides on trains too. In a quieter era of rail travel the only announcements, apart from service cancellations, used to be the one about refraining from urination when the train was in the station, and advice not to poke your head out of the window of a moving carriage.

The pernicious creep of Big Nanny
Nicholas Farrell
Italy’s hostility to Nato is building

Ravenna, Italy The war in Ukraine has caused an unholy convergence of the left and right in Italy. While there is nothing formal so far about this alliance of enemies, it nevertheless threatens to destroy the unity of Nato. The most high-profile participant is -Matteo Salvini, leader of the Lega – the party with the second-highest number of MPs in Italy’s parliament – which is invariably defined as ‘far right’. Salvini, who has been one of Vladimir Putin’s strongest supporters outside Russia, condemned the invasion of Ukraine and has now come out as a pacifist.

Italy’s hostility to Nato is building
Owen Matthews
Cold Turkey: why is Erdogan resisting Nato’s expansion?

Driving a hard bargain is the Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s chief survival skill – one that has kept him in power for nearly as long as his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin. And the basic principles of bargaining are twofold: never give something away for nothing, and make your threats to walk away convincing. No surprise, then, that Erdogan’s buzz-killing announcement last week that Turkey would oppose Swedish and Finnish membership of Nato was made in characteristically blunt terms.

Cold Turkey: why is Erdogan resisting Nato’s expansion?
James Heale
Changing channels: the new war for political broadcasting

It’s hard to step outside nowadays without being confronted with a massive picture of Piers Morgan. In the adverts for his new TalkTV show he can be seen crushing the House of Commons in his hands or pointing to an address for the channel’s complaints department. ‘Love him or hate him,’ the adverts declare, ‘you won’t want to miss him.’ Actually, it seems, people don’t mind if they do. At the last count, barely 40,000 tuned in.

Changing channels: the new war for political broadcasting
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