UK role in Ukraine crisis more marginal than PM thinks... but all must stay calm and stop shouting

UKRAINE might be far away, but the situation there is very dangerous for the world as a whole.

Things are changing quickly, and I confess straight away that I haven’t been in Ukraine talking to politicians for some years.

But you will have seen the disturbing clips of troop movements, columns of tanks ploughing through the snow and of warplanes taking off.

The causes of all this are complicated, with deep roots in the collapse of the Soviet Union, the arms race, and the end of the Cold War.

Basically, Russia opposes extending membership of the western defence alliance (NATO) to countries which before the fall of communism were members of the former eastern power bloc (The Warsaw Pact).

But by now most of those countries have joined NATO anyway.

At the same time Russia has its own ambitions.

It has supported (and denied supporting) a low-level war in the Donbas area in the east of Ukraine for years.

Many people have been killed and injured, including civilians. Russia has annexed part of the country, the Crimea (which at one time was part of Russia). Unsurprisingly, Ukraine also wants to join NATO.

The danger now is that all this might extend into a full-scale conflict.

The USA claims that the Russian forces are ready to roll. Russia says it has no intention of invading Ukraine.

The extreme and unlikely peril is that these two nuclear armed powers will become directly involved.

And this at a time when nuclear disarmament has been off the agenda for years, and the media on both sides are winding up tension.

UK government politicians seem more concerned with minding their backs and saving their jobs.

Or they are angling for the top job.

But those senior ministers are not convincingly up to their responsibilities.

Our Foreign Secretary had a ‘challenging’ meeting with her counterpart in Moscow the other day, and clearly, he got the better of it.

Mr Johnson was supposed to talk with Mr Putin last week but had to attend to his domestic troubles instead.

Later he flew to Ukraine for little more than a photo opportunity.

And all this having said at Prime Minister’s Questions that it was the UK’s role ’to lead the west’.

Let me be kind.

The Prime Minister has a rich imagination.

Fortunately, other leaders seem to be doing better.

The French President M. Macron held lengthy and serious talks with the Russian President last week.

Today (Monday) the new German Chancellor Olaf Scholz is travelling to the Ukrainian capital Kyiv going on to Moscow for talks with Mr Putin.

I hope for all our sakes that those involved will pause, stop the shouting and the shooting, and look for a secure resolution. Our elected representatives in Parliament will try to hold the UK ministers, marginal though they seem, to account.

However, Mr Johnson’s recent open disrespect for Parliament and for constitutional principles suggests he will take no real notice.