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MPs have handed Ukraine’s ambassador to the UK, Vadym Prystaiko, a standing ovation as he sat in the gallery overlooking the Commons chamber.. The applause, which lasted for nearly a minute, came ahead of a PMQs dominated by sanctions and the UK’s response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
In further significant developments, Boris Johnson has accused Vladimir Putin of committing war crimes as he condemned “abhorrent” attacks on Ukrainian citizens. It comes as the country’s emergency services report 2,000 civilian deaths amid fears of a shift in Russian tactics towards the indiscriminate targeting of urban areas.
There is a growing sense that the West’s response, and in particular sanctions, may be in place for some time. This would in some ways represent a return to the past.
In 1960, 44,000 people lived in Anchorage, Alaska. In fact, Alaska had achieved statehood only the year before. Yet the city, where average temperatures reach -8.4 degrees celsius in January, played host to one of the most strategically important passenger airports in the world.
If you want to travel from Europe to East or Southeast Asia, you essentially need to fly over one country: Russia. But during the Cold War, Soviet and Eastern Bloc airspace was closed to western Airlines. European carriers including BOAC (British Airways), Air France, Iberia, KLM, Lufthansa SAS and Swissair all flew instead via Anchorage.
After the collapse of the Soviet Union, western airlines were suddenly able to use Russian airspace, and alongside improvements in engine technology, this transformed an indirect 18 hour-trip from London to Tokyo into one that today takes 12 hours. Or at least it did, until the UK and EU banned Russian flag carrier Aeroflot from their skies, after which Russia reciprocated.
We’ve become so used to the convenience of direct flights to virtually anywhere, but the reality is that for decades, they were often impossible. I tell this story not because the ability to fly direct from Heathrow to Haneda is as important or urgent as the scenes of terror in Ukraine, where families are facing a desperate race to flee Kyiv amid fears of Russian carpet bombing.
But because the sanctions the West is placing on Russia may not be short-lived. Indeed, as we write in today’s leader column, the measures can and must remain in place beyond the Russian invasion, for example in the event Putin seeks to install a puppet regime in Kyiv.
Such an eventuality would not only represent a fundamental and terrible impingement on the freedoms and right to self-determination of millions of Ukrainians, it would also re-shape how the global economy operates. After three decades of rapid globalisation and growing economic interdependency, the world may be set to undergo many more re-routings.
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In the comment pages, Shadow Foreign Secretary David Lammy calls Vladimir Putin’s war is as significant as 9/11 and says the battle for our values must still be fought.
Meanwhile, our Home Affairs Editor Martin Bentham writes that the British public is fed up with all the rotten money that’s been swilling into our capital for years. Speaking of which, City Editor Oscar Williams-Grut says business must come clean about dirty cash, not just cut links.
And finally, this caused a bit of a stir at Evening Standard Towers, but
Daisy Buchannan, whose work tormentor ruined her life, explains how that toxic colleague could be the best thing that ever happened to you.
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