How The British Media Went To War With Russia

Professor Robert Skidelsky FBA, Lord Skidelsky writes:

An accepted difference between a despotism and a democracy is that in the first there is a single opinion while the second allows a variety of opinion.

The great exception is wartime. In the Second World War, Britain, Germany and the Soviet Union spoke with single voices — in Britain without overt censorship. In war the world is divided into friends and enemies; to show any partiality for the enemy is treason.

Britain is not currently at war. As a consequence, Britons are said to have access to truth, while the Chinese and Russians are fed disinformation and fake news. Yet on the subject of Ukraine Britain speaks as though it is at war with Russia — that is, with one voice. Any contrary view is regarded as, if not quite treasonable, as beyond the pale. Moreover, of the NATO allies, Britain has been the most consistently bellicose on the subject of Ukraine.

Why this should be so is something which historians will long discuss. Here my purpose is simply to document the existence of a single opinion. I do so by citing the editorials on the Russian-Ukraine war in the Times newspaper from the Russian invasion on 24 February 2022 to the end of 2024, about 120 of them, or just under one a week, by far the most attention given to any single topic in this period.

From 2022 to 2024 The Times framed Ukraine’s war as the West’s war, with Ukrainian victory, defined as the full withdrawal of Russian forces from Ukraine, payment of reparations and accountability of the Russian leadership for war crimes, as being essential for European security and preservation of a “rules-based order”. Only in the last half of 2024, when Russia seemed to be gaining the military advantage, was talk of the need for a full Ukrainian victory dropped.

The Times editorials, in their unstinting condemnation of the Russian invasion, their insistent demand that Britain and its allies supply Ukraine with the sinews of victory, and their equation of a negotiated peace with appeasement of dictatorship constitute a representative sample of mainstream British opinion. The same phrases, the same sentiments were on display in every mainstream newspaper and political magazine. More “nuanced” voices like those of Simon Jenkins in The Guardian, John Gray and Wolfgang Münchau in the New Statesman and Owen Matthews in the journal Spectator were drowned by the massed war-drums. I myself was effectively cancelled, with the notable exception of one article in Prospect and a couple of co-signed letters to the Financial Times. In the House of Lords I was joined by Richard Balfe and Dale Campbell Savours. That was about the sum of the parliamentary opposition. Nigel Farage has been the one front-line British politician openly critical of the official view, but he has not made peace in Ukraine a political cause.

The Times started with the headline “Slava Ukraini!” (Glory to Ukraine) of 25 February 2022, following it up with calls for maximum Western help to repel the invader (24 March, 6 April, 16 27, 31 May, 24 August). Typical is this from 16 May: “The West must do all it can to help President Zelensky’s forces defeat the Russians and not worry about humiliating Putin”.

From the start, The Times set its face against “siren voices” calling for peace (27 May, 6 June, 1 August 2022). The Kremlin’s justifications for its invasion were “baseless”; Putin’s policies founded on “lies [and] deceit” (9 May, 26 September 2022). It was “foolish” to trust any peace offers made by an “inveterate liar” (25 February 2022). Any appeasement of Putin would only embolden his further aggression (27 May 2022).

Putin and other Russians had to be held to account for their war crimes (28 March, 5 April 2022). The West must resist Russian nuclear blackmail (21 September 2022). “The path to peace lies in Russia’s military defeat” (25 February, 27 June, 4 July, 1 August, 21 September 2022).

Russian military reverses in the summer of 2022, plus the “grotesque farce” of sham referenda in the four provinces occupied by Russia, prompted The Times to argue for “more weapons, more military training”, more economic sanctions against Russia till the dragooned provinces were liberated by “force of arms” (7 September, 26 September, 10 October 2022). In the face of Russia’s expected winter offensive the West, The Times said, must hold firm till Putin lost his nerve (9, 12 December 2022).

So it continued. Editorial comment in 2023 was dominated by the need to provide Ukraine with “unwavering” military and economic support, criticism of tardiness in supplying it and attacks on Russian sympathisers and war crimes.

Kyiv must be given “game changing weapons” (30 January 2023); the success of Ukraine’s summer offensive depended on large-scale delivery of advanced weapons and air defences (30 May 2023); delay in supplying them would only prolong the war (10 July 2023); NATO must “act decisively to provide the resources Ukraine needs for victory” ( 15 September 2023); the “knee-capping” of Kyiv by restricting supplies risked a “forced peace” (4 December 2023). The Times welcomed the impending accession of Finland and Sweden as strengthening European security (4 April 2023); and advocated a “clear path” to NATO membership for Ukraine (5 June, 10 July 2023).

At the same time, Russia must be held fully accountable for its war crimes (10 April, 6 June 2023). Specifically “Britain should lead the efforts to sanction those responsible and hold Putin’s regime accountable for its human rights abuses” (17 April 2023).

In 2024, following the failure of Ukraine’s 2023 counter-offensive, advocacy of arms for victory gradually changed to advocacy of arms to avoid defeat. Thus Europe must “pony up” if Ukraine was to prevail (25 January 2024); in withholding a $60 billion aid package, America was “starving an embattled nation of the means to fight a ruthless invader” (10 April 2024). The Times approvingly cited Britain’s hawkish Defence Secretary Ben Wallace to the effect that “Germany is pretty much infiltrated by Russian intelligence” (4 March 2024). Viktor Orbán of Hungary, the “Trojan horse” of 5 April 2022 and the “enemy within” of 23 October 2023, was further castigated as “the maverick Kremlin stooge” holding up European war supplies to Ukraine (12 February 2024).

The Times now started to demand an end of restrictions on deploying Western-supplied missiles to hit targets deep in Russia (3 May, 25 July, 9 August 2024); “hollow” Russian threats of escalation should be ignored (13 September 2024).There was a case for giving Ukraine atomic weapons, if only as a warning against appeasing peace deals (14 November 2024). As the end of the third year of war and the start of the Trump presidency approached it was “crucial for Europe, led by Britain, to maintain unwavering support for Ukraine to prevent the emboldening of authoritarian aggression” (17 December 2024).

The purpose of this recital is not to criticise the Times narrative still less to endorse the Russian version of the same events. Its purpose is twofold. First, to exhibit the lack of variety of opinion. It is simply not the case that there was no other story to be told. That NATO was not quite the defensive alliance it was cracked up to be; that its eastward expansion had provoked Russia; that Ukraine was not quite the guiltless victim of Russian aggression; that Putin was not Hitler; that it was imprudent to supply Ukraine with war-escalating weapons; that it was morally obnoxious to trade Ukrainian blood for Europe’s freedom — these reasonable objections to the dominant policy stance succumbed to a debilitating self-censorship. Once Russia’s invasion of Ukraine had been framed as an attack on British security and values and the “rules-based” international system, the space for dissent vanished and with it the search for truth.

My second purpose is pragmatic. To get a durable peace we have to insist that there is another story to be told, perhaps not as good as ours, but not negligible. Then we can have a proper debate about the contours of a just peace. Otherwise we will stagger to a “transactional” deal à la Trump with the old stories unquestioned and likely to reignite at the next provocation.