The Next Steppes

If Britons have died in Ukraine, then, while they themselves were to blame for having gone there, Liz Truss is also to blame for having incited them to do so.

European companies and even states are finding ways to pay in roubles, and more and more will do so. If you do not pay the gas bill, then you get cut off, and the gasman would not take payment in chocolate buttons just because you happened to have them.

In Europe, at least, the sanctions regime is very vulnerable indeed. We are going to have to live between the neo-Hamiltonian America that is coming after Joe Biden, and the Bonapartist Eurasia that is emerging before our very eyes. Good luck to both of them, in fact.

That does raise the question of the Soviet-style economies and cultures of Donetsk, Luhansk, Transnistria, and no doubt Kherson very soon. Those hoping for incorporation into Russia are probably going to be disappointed, and those fear-mongering about it are probably going to made to look fools.

Most Russians have never heard of Alexei Navalny. The main opposition to Vladimir Putin is the Communist Party. Whatever he might do with his new territories, he can do without giving their inhabitants the vote in Russia.