Cities under siege: Russia’s campaign intensifies
Russia kept up its grinding artillery assault on Ukraine’s cities this week as its invasion force continued to make slow progress. The shelling has left hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian civilians trapped in urban areas, without running water or power (see page 22). The authorities in one of the most heavily bombarded cities, the port of Mariupol, tried to evacuate residents over the weekend after Moscow announced a ceasefire, but had to abandon their efforts when Russian forces resumed firing. The Kremlin later offered “humanitarian corridors” out of other cities, only for it to emerge that many of the escape routes ended in Russia or Belarus. Last week, a Russian missile almost hit a nuclear plant in Ukraine, the largest such facility in Europe. This Wednesday, there were reports that an air strike had destroyed a children’s and maternity hospital in Mariupol.
Western leaders, meanwhile, stepped up their sanctions campaign against Vladimir Putin. Britain joined the US in announcing a ban on all imports of oil from Russia, and the EU unveiled a plan to cut gas imports from the country by two-thirds within a year. Poland also offered to transfer its fleet of MiG-29 fighter jets to the US in order to have them dispatched to Ukraine. But the Pentagon nixed that idea, warning that it risked dragging Nato into a direct confrontation with Russia. In an unprecedented virtual address to the House of Commons on Tuesday, Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, urged MPs to do more to help, and likened his country’s struggle to Britain’s fight against Nazism. Ukrainians will fight Russian forces “in the forests, in the fields, on the shores and on the streets”, he said. “We will fight to the end.”
You have to admire the bravery of Ukraine’s people, said Simon Tisdall in The Guardian. They are risking everything in this unequal fight against tyranny. Yet Western democracies are just looking on, too afraid to help stop the slaughter. Rather than leaving Zelensky and his people to their fate, we should answer their pleas to impose a no-fly zone over Ukraine – “and tell the Kremlin to stop the killing”. Sooner or later, we’ll have to confront the Russians, agreed Sean O’Grady in The Independent. Putin won’t stop at Ukraine. Nato leaders are nervous about getting directly involved in the conflict, but given that Putin has already described the sanctions as “akin to an act of war”, it’s hard to see why we should shy away from policing a no-fly zone. We can’t afford to sit this war out. It’s quite possible that Putin will resort to chemical weapons or even “battlefield” nuclear weapons in Ukraine. Would we remain on the sidelines then? “Nato is stronger than Putin and his military know it. We need to show the resolution Jack Kennedy did in the Cuban missile crisis, or that Ronald Reagan did in the final stages of the Cold War.”
Calls for a no-fly zone are growing louder, said The Economist, but that course of action would be both futile and dangerous. The threat to Ukrainian civilians is coming chiefly from ground-based weapons, not planes. And it’s essential that we preserve a clear line between supporting Ukraine and directly engaging Russia. If we send forces into the battlefield, it will fuel Putin’s narrative that Nato is a threat to Russia and risk triggering an escalatory cycle that could end in nuclear war. A no-fly zone would amount to a “reckless” declaration of war on Russia, agreed The Observer. There are other, better ways to help, such as by sending more defensive weapons and supplies to Ukraine, for humanitarian purposes, and documenting war crimes with a view to delivering justice when the conflict is over.
Escalating sanctions on Russia’s hydrocarbon exports has the power to hit Putin “where it hurts”, said The Sunday Times – given how reliant his regime is on this income. “Russia exported $235bn of energy last year, according to the Institute of International Finance, about half of its total export revenues.” That amounts to more than $640m a day dropping into the Kremlin’s coffers from buyers of Russian gas, oil, diesel and coal, “helping to prop up Putin’s murderous regime and pay for the tanks shelling his neighbour”. The free world has no choice but to wean itself off Russian energy, said Matthew Parris in The Times. “Until we cut this umbilical cord, we can never seriously square up to Moscow’s resident monster.”
“Until we cut this umbilical cord, we can never seriously square up to
Moscow’s resident monster”
An energy embargo won’t stop Putin, said Wolfgang Münchau in The Spectator. He already has all the gear he needs to level Kyiv. But it would mean he “might not have the funding to do this ever again” – which is the best outcome the West can hope for right now. Targeting Russia’s energy exports is not without risks for the West, though, said Larry Elliott in The Guardian. It’s easy enough for the US to shun Putin’s oil: Russia accounts for only 7% of America’s oil imports. But the EU gets 40% of its gas and just over a quarter of its oil from Russia. Reducing that dependence could have the effect of speeding up the transition to clean energy, but in the short term Europe could struggle with weaker growth and higher inflation.
Standing up to Putin will involve some painful adjustments for the West, said Matthew Syed in The Sunday Times. But the Ukraine crisis has alerted people to what’s at stake. Politicians have belatedly recognised the dangers of “strategic dependence on autocracies”, and the need to bolster their alliances and boost defence spending. Make no mistake: “we will suffer a drop in living standards” as a result of this more assertive stance. But this is “a fight for our way of life”. Putin is betting that the West’s resolve will crumble over time, said Rafael Behr in The Guardian. He’s betting that voters in effete liberal democracies won’t be willing “to make sacrifices and withstand economic pain to help their neighbours and defend their way of life. I think he is wrong. I hope he is wrong.”