Russian plot adds to Putin's charge sheet
This prominent Russian journalist is a noted critic of his country’s president and had been forced to seek refuge in the Ukrainian capital because he feared for his life if he stayed in Moscow. However, just as Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia discovered in Salisbury, just being a long way from Russia may not be safeguard enough. The bulk of the civilised world now accepts they were poisoned by a nerve agent produced in Russia and administered by agents of the state. Led by the UK, significant sanctions, including the expulsion of Russian diplomats, have been imposed by many countries but the latest outrage must surely require even tougher action, even if Putin’s arch-apologist Sergei Lavrov, the Kremlin’s foreign minister, has issued the inevitable denial that his country had anything to do with a plot against Mr Babchenko’s life. The Ukrainian government, on the other hand – and with plentiful experience of Russian gangsterism – suspected the hand of Russian special forces and staged the extraordinary stunt which – for a time – had the world thinking another of Putin’s critics was dead – and ended with an arrest.
This prominent Russian journalist is a noted critic of his country’s president and had been forced to seek refuge in the Ukrainian capital because he feared for his life if he stayed in Moscow. However, just as Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia discovered in Salisbury, just being a long way from Russia may not be safeguard enough. The bulk of the civilised world now accepts they were poisoned by a nerve agent produced in Russia and administered by agents of the state. Led by the UK, significant sanctions, including the expulsion of Russian diplomats, have been imposed by many countries but the latest outrage must surely require even tougher action, even if Putin’s arch-apologist Sergei Lavrov, the Kremlin’s foreign minister, has issued the inevitable denial that his country had anything to do with a plot against Mr Babchenko’s life. The Ukrainian government, on the other hand – and with plentiful experience of Russian gangsterism – suspected the hand of Russian special forces and staged the extraordinary stunt which – for a time – had the world thinking another of Putin’s critics was dead – and ended with an arrest.
GETTY Journalist Arkady Babchenko
Maybe he could tell us what level of outrage would persuade him to take his talents elsewhere? Alan Cochrane
This all follows hard on the heels, not just of the Salisbury outrage, but of the firm conclusion of both the Dutch and Australian governments that responsibility for the shooting down of Malaysian airliner MH17 in July 2014, killing all 298 on board, including 80 children, may also be laid at the Kremlin’s door. Investigators have ruled that the missile which brought down the plane en route from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur had been traced all the way back to a Russian military unit, based in Kursk but operating in the Ukraine. Needless to say that finding was rejected by our old friend Sergei Lavrov, when he insisted – incredibly – that his country couldn’t take it seriously as the Russians had been excluded from the investigation. All of which leads us to ask if Alex Salmond has yet made up his mind about his employers at Russia Today, the Kremlin’s very own TV station, for which, thus far, he’s been happy to work. Is that still the case? Or maybe he could tell us what level of outrage would persuade him to take his talents elsewhere?
NC Has Alex Salmond made up his mind yet?
_____________________________ Seasonal EU workers are left in limbo There was an interesting passage between rural affairs supremo Fergus Ewing and Baron Duncan of Springbank – aka Ian Duncan, the Scotland Office minister in the House of Lords – at the Scottish Lands and Estates conference in Edinburgh this week. At stake was the vexed question of seasonal workers, from all over the EU but generally Eastern Europe, currently employed in picking our rasps and strawberries, “howking” our tatties and generally labouring in the nation’s fields and farms. What will happen to them after Brexit, is what the lairds want to know. While Theresa May has made it clear that EU nationals who’ve been here for five years will have nothing to fear, the situation of temporary workers who’re only on Scotland’s farms at harvest time is still not known. Mr Ewing said he’d been promised a decision by March but that these essential workers were still waiting to hear their fate.
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Those arriving this year need to know if there will be work for them next year or they’ll simply stay away – causing major problems on our farms. For his part Lord Duncan was asked if there wasn’t a chance of home grown labour filling any gaps created by a shortage of foreigners. Sadly, as he ruefully acknowledges – and as the likes of Angus MP Kirstene Hair has campaigned upon – there is absolutely no chance of getting Scottish workers to do that sort of hard graft. All of which means that Mr Ewing is correct in repeating the cry that it’s high time the UK government got its finger out. Bad timing on my part... Drunken louts besmirching Ayrshire beaches apart, this hot weather has been fabulous. So much so I’ve booked a weekend camping with my grandsons, and guess what? There’s a yellow warning for thunder and lightning on all three days. Hope there’s a hostelry within easy reach... ___________________________________
Pointless report is simply another reason to back the Union Scottish Secretary David Mundell was surely correct in heading off to the Italian sunshine this week without taking with him, as holiday reading, the report from the Wilson Commission which outlined supposed new evidence for promoting growth if Scotland becomes independent. The report has received massive and, frankly, completely overblown coverage and is being used by Nicola Sturgeon as evidence in her quest for another independence referendum, as well as an overweight bone to toss to her party’s spring conference in Aberdeen in 10 days time. She claims she has a mandate for another vote after “winning” the 2016 Scottish elections. The SNP did emerge as the biggest party, but it was nothing like the victory she’d expected and was followed by more reverses last year... which means that Mr Wilson’s report will be given much greater significance. But rather than studying any or all of this report, surely the correct response from the ordinary voter will be: what’s new?
NC ‘The SNP did emerge as the biggest party, but it was nothing like the victory she’d expected’
Its main conclusions, as evidenced by the leaks to the press in advance of publication – on the currency, immigration, comparison with other small countries, and supposed financial benefit to each and every Scot – were all tested to destruction in the 2014 referendum campaign. Result? The UK won. The report also states that Scotland is in a position of “greater financial and economic integration with the rest of the UK”, and with the financial service sector playing a greater role in the Scottish economy than is the case with comparable countries. I couldn’t agree more and reckon that these words are simply another reason for maintaining the Union – and for continuing to say to Ms Sturgeon: “We’ve made our decision in independence – now go away and do your day job. Like fixing the health service and our children’s schools.” _____________________________
NC An hen harrier