Ukraine’s fighting for its freedom – and for the West’s, too
THIS time last year we would have been understandably alarmed to hear some Russian nut job threatening the UK with nuclear annihilation.
But one year after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, we hardly blink when nukes are waved in our direction.
“London will be turned to dust!” shrieked Putin propagandist Vladimir Solovyov this week, enraged by reports that the British Government is going to supply more weapons to Ukraine.
Solovyov is a mainstream TV star in Russia, the host of a popular nightly talk show on channel Russia-1.
So his threats are akin to Richard Madeley calling for Moscow to be nuked on Good Morning Britain.
We do not take the likes of this nuclear warmonger Solovyov seriously.
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But we should.
Because this is our war too.
The first anniversary of Russia’s insane invasion of Ukraine was on Friday and it will not end any time soon.
Even if the UK gives Ukraine the fighter jets it craves, it is likely to drag on for years.
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And even if Putin was gone, there is nothing to suggest he would not be replaced by another rabid Russian nationalist.
The unpalatable truth is that Russia’s war of murderous aggression has enormous support among the brain-washed Russian population.
The heroic resistance of the Ukrainian people to Putin’s unprovoked invasion will echo through history.
But already there are those in the West who fear the prospect of Ukraine winning this war.
Justin Welby, the Archbishop of Canterbury, warns, “Russia cannot end up like Germany in 1919 — it must be able to recover and be secure without being allowed to repeat its aggression.”
Russia deserves to end up like Germany in 1945.
But expect more calls for appeasing Putin as the war drags on.
The West will inevitably become tired of this war. It will seem far away from us.
It will feel like the massively expensive kit we send to Ukraine is never enough.
What if the F-16 jets Ukraine wants don’t end the war?
We will feel — perhaps sooner than we think — that actually we can’t afford it.
Putin’s rabble army
More voices of doubt will be raised. What does President Zelensky expect? Doesn’t he always want more?
Ukraine will be urged to negotiate with its Russian invaders — especially if there is eventually a Republican President in the White House and a Labour Prime Minister in 10 Downing Street.
But it will still be our war. Even when we are tired of hearing about it.
Even when we are sick of paying for it.
There is no peace for the world while Russia is in Ukraine.
Putin started a war he can never actually win. Even if Putin’s wildest dreams came true and his rabble army marched triumphant through the streets of Kyiv — as was widely expected to happen when Russian tanks rolled into Ukraine one year ago — Putin would occupy a country where 43million people hate his guts.
And are willing to die for their freedom.
Even if Putin subjugated Ukraine, Russia would inherit another Vietnam, another Afghanistan — a conflict that can never be won by the invader, even if it drags on for 20 years.
But if Russia lacks a clear route to victory, then so does Ukraine.
When NHS nurses tell us they do not earn a living wage, it is difficult to sustain an endless enthusiasm for sending more weapons to Ukraine.
Don’t we have problems of our own?
Yes, we sure as hell do.
But Putin is one of them.
And Russia, that nuclear-armed rogue state, is one of them.
The Ukrainians are fighting for their freedom.
But every time London is threatened with Russian nuclear bombs, we are reminded that Ukraine is fighting for our freedom too.
LEAVE DAHL ALONE
THE rewriting of Roald Dahl’s books is cultural vandalism.
Dahl’s publishers – Puffin – have given themselves permission to rewrite our greatest storyteller as they see appropriate.
“Words matter,” Puffin simper on new editions of Dahl’s books.
“This book was written many years ago, and so we regularly review the language to ensure that it can continue to be enjoyed by all today.”
Dahl’s books will never be enjoyed if they have been censored by some anonymous cretin at his publishing house.
Already hundreds of changes have been made.
The Cloud Men in James and the Giant Peach are now Cloud People.
In Matilda, our book-loving hero “went on olden day sailing ships with Joseph Conrad.”
But now Matilda “went to 19th Century estates with Jane Austen.”
Augustus Gloop – the immortal glutton from Charlie And The Chocolate Factory – is no longer fat.
“That grumpy old cow in the living room has every one of those rotten illnesses,” Dahl writes in George’s Marvellous Medicine.
Which becomes, “Grandma has every one of those rotten illnesses.”
Roald Dahl would puke.
He sold 250million books. He knew what he was doing.
This censorship would not be happening if he was still alive.
If his publishers object to the world Dahl created, they should not rewrite his books.
Why not just burn them?
BBC Radio 2 has replaced Ken Bruce with Vernon Kay.
Er – why?
ROYAL ROAST A JOY
HARRY and Meghan were mercilessly mocked on South Park as the privacy-seeking Prince and Princess of Canada, a pair of self-obsessed, self-pitying, private-jet-flying narcissists.
America’s honeymoon with Harry and Meghan lasted quite a long time.
Looks like the honeymoon’s over.
HE lacks principles and has no new ideas,” Conservative Party chairman Greg Hands says of Keir Starmer.
I am not sure that ever stopped someone from becoming Prime Minister.
The Director Who Loved Me - Tim’s Bond girl
DISHEVELLED director Tim Burton, 64, is courting the Italian actress, model and Bond girl Monica Bellucci.
“If you don’t leave now, we’ll die together,” Monica memorably panted to 007 in Spectre.
“I can think of worse ways to go,” smirked Daniel Craig.
With films like Edward Scissorhands and Beetlejuice, Burton undoubtedly has the most original imagination in Hollywood.
But what on earth does he see in her?
BOWIE’S MIGHTY LEGACY
“I KEPT everything,” David Bowie told me in 1993 when he was urging me to take three years off to write his autobiography.
And I thought – not everything, surely, David.
But Bowie really did keep everything, Videos, diaries, album artwork.
The spangly jumpsuit he wore on his first Top of The Pops appearance.
Every outrageous stage costume, every intimate notebook, every musical instrument.
Bowie’s obsessive hoarding paid unimaginable dividends.
The exhibition on his life and career at the Victoria And Albert museum in 2013 was – by some distance – the greatest exhibition I have ever seen in my life, an exhilarating barrage of sound and vision eventually seen by two million people.
There were rumours that Bowie himself – heavily disguised – was one of them.
Now the V&A has acquired 80,000 Bowie items that are to be displayed at the David Bowie Centre for the Study of Performing Arts, due to open at the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park in East London in 2025.
If it is anything like the V&A Bowie exhibition of 2013, it will become a tourist attraction to rival Buckingham Palace.
MOTSON SO LOVED
JOHN MOTSON, beloved voice of the national game, has left us at the age of 77.
Motson provided the ecstatic soundtrack for some of football’s greatest moments, from England’s World Cup penalty shoot-out heartbreak to Gazza’s mesmeric goal against Scotland to Ronnie Radford’s screamer when Hereford played Newcastle on a ploughed field in 1972.
John did not have the lyrical flourish of a Kenneth Wolstenholme. Motty stuck to the basics.
“England are out!”
“Oh what a goal!”
And “Yes!”
But nobody took us closer to football’s pure, beating heart
And that is why John Motson was so loved.
PUT IT IN A DOGGY BAG, TA
LUCIE the golden retriever stages a sit-down protest every time she passes a Greggs, demanding one of their sausage rolls.
“She sits down and does that thing where she refuses to move,” says owner Cara Ovens, from Edinburgh.
“She’s possibly Greggs’ top dog fan. She loves the smell and gets a little treat every few weeks.”
Funnily enough, our dog, Stan the cavalier King Charles Spaniel, feels the same about Caffé Nero.
He demands we enter every Nero we pass.
He is partial to Nero’s cheese toasties, chicken sandwiches and, at a push, the croissant crumbs on the floor.
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On Christmas Day, the one day that Nero is closed, I tell him we can’t go inside and he looks at me as if I am barking mad.
Our dogs are the only thing keeping the great British High Street alive.