A major event of international importance took place on Thursday evening. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has fired the commander-in-chief of his armed forces, Valerii Zaluzhnyi.
The general’s crime was that he had openly said that the terrible war that tore his country apart was now a stalemate. This is of course true. He also runs the risk of becoming more popular than his political boss. This is also dangerous.
From this underreported event we have learned far more about the reality of this abysmally stupid, unnecessary and cruel war than from most of the lavish coverage of it. God grant it ends soon.
While the sounds of doors slamming, fists banging on desks and angry shouts undoubtedly echoed around the seat of power in Kiev, the world’s gaze turned instead to Washington DC and Moscow.
In the American capital, a tragedy that had long been visible reached a new and heartbreaking stage.
President Volodymyr Zelensky (L) shakes hands with the Supreme Commander of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, Valerii Zaluzhnyi
President Joe Biden was humiliatingly prosecuted for mishandling official documents because he is too old and confused. He is, according to a prosecutor, “a well-meaning older man with a poor memory.”
The President of the United States reveals this incessantly, confusing world leaders, countries and who knows what else.
I have always found Mr. Biden to be a likeable person, even if I have little appreciation for his politics. I find it painful to see his public decline, as dangerous as it is for the world.
It angers me that his Democratic Party managers are cynically trying to keep him on the ballot for the November presidential election.
How sad it is that one of the oldest and richest political movements in the world has no one else to take on the almost equally alarming Donald Trump.
In Moscow, still beautiful amid the snow, the creepy despot Vladimir Putin submitted to an interview by the clever but erratic broadcaster Tucker Carlson.
Putin is aging enormously and starting to look like a pink sausage, just like us old people, with a swollen face and sparse hair. But he still has his wits about him.
In my opinion, interviewing a politician in power, on record, is the most useless form of journalism known to man.
Or the reporter conspires with the politician, who by arrangement broadcasts a ‘story’ that can then be placed on the front page or at the top of the TV bulletin. Or there is pointless sparring, where nothing is given away.
In Putin’s case, he has an embarrassing habit of answering questions at length (most Western politicians avoid answering them).
This kind of thing is like being locked in a prison cell with an unpopular and persistent history teacher (“…and then, in 1386…”). You can’t go. He wants to tell you everything – the sign of boredom – and won’t stop.
Poor Mr. Carlson fought the urge to yawn so hard, and was so awed, that at times he looked as if his brain was about to explode.
Two deep slits appeared in the skin above the bridge of his nose as his eyes slid in and out of focus. I expect he still has a headache.
A woman holds a photo of the former Supreme Commander of the Armed Forces of Ukraine Valerii Zaluzhnyi during a rally in support of him on Independence Square in Kiev
I knew how he felt. It reminded me of a disgusting interview with the future Sir Anthony Blair, which I was granted when he was Shadow Home Secretary. It was almost physically painful.
When I finally had a root canal many years later, I thought about this encounter.
Dentistry was much more fun and went by faster. Over the course of a long, slow hour, he reluctantly told me something previously unknown – that his student rock band was called Ugly Rumors – my one little scoop.
But I still don’t understand what was wrong with Mr. Carlson’s attempt to get something. Several idiots suggested that Putin is like Hitler and that interviewing him is treason.
What kind of bilge is this? The whole point of the war in Ukraine is that Britain and America are afraid to get involved directly.
We still have embassies in Moscow. Their staff is not a traitor. Neither is the BBC’s excellent reporter, Steve Rosenberg. He lives in Moscow, speaks excellent Russian and would undoubtedly like to win an interview with Mr Putin. But I doubt even he would get anywhere.
7mph sign on the access road to the Oxford Academy in Littlemor. Photo credit: Peter Hitchens
Here’s the strangest speed sign I’ve ever seen: a speed limit of 7 miles per hour.
According to the Oxford Academy, a high school in my hometown, it works by making drivers think.
I would add that it is also quite close to the actual speed of traffic in that city, since the recent introduction of a new highway system. Well, it suits cyclists like me.
I’m not going to watch Masters Of The Air, the new TV series about the American bombing of Germany in World War II.
I greatly admire the young men who undertook these terrifying missions. But I hate the glorification of bombing, which was astonishingly ineffective, often very harsh on innocent civilians and a huge waste of aircrew.
Subsequent research showed that bombing German cities cost less than three percent of Germany’s economic strength.
The entire bombing campaign, both British and American, cost only 17 percent of Germany’s economic potential in 1944.
But politicians, ignorant and easily seduced by TV and movies, still think bombing is a magic weapon and are surprised when it fails – as they are doing now against the Houthis.
Callum Turner and Austin Butler in ‘Masters of the Air’
Tories missed a trick with Maggie’s miners
Just before Christmas 1984, at the height of the bitter and violent miners’ strike, Margaret Thatcher invited a group of working miners to dinner, even though they might not have come had they known she would be there.
The pitmen had bravely resisted the intimidation of Arthur Scargill’s striking supporters. They all received a mysterious phone call.
A voice said, “Be at this address at this time on this day.” When one of them, Roland Taylor, replied that he would not come, he was told with even more determination that he must attend. “No, you’ll be there,” it declared. Then the caller hung up.
He contacted his fellow resistance members and they had all had the same phone call, so they went together, taking the train from Nottinghamshire to London and taking taxis to the address.
This turned out to be the large house of former Labor MP Sir Woodrow Wyatt (father of the journalist Petronella). As they were chatting, the door suddenly opened and Mrs Thatcher and her husband Denis entered.
Roland, who is fiercely apolitical, says there was no discussion of politics. As she shook his hand, Roland recalls, “She looked like a porcelain doll, but she radiated an aura of power that was very strong and warned everyone, ‘Don’t mess with me.’
Mrs Thatcher spoke easily to the miners whose bravery would lead to Scargill’s defeat. One of them called her “Maggie” and then felt embarrassed, but she insisted they all call her that.
Roland speaks briefly about this event in the recent Channel 4 series.
For me there is something tragic about it. If I had been the Tory party I would have rewarded the miners from Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire who rose up against Scargill. Their pits should still be open.