LONDON. A turning point that is anything but unexpected, but nevertheless dramatic in the perception of London. The Russian military attack on Ukraine does not take the UK by surprise and yet echoes across the Channel as a shock. Boris Johnson was one of the very first Western leaders to react, when the island was not even dawn; and it was the second after Joe Biden and before Emmanuel Macron to hear Ukrainian President Volodymir Zelensky by telephone. This – he told him, quoting Winston Churchill – “is the darkest hour” for Kiev; but the Kingdom and its Western allies “will not remain on the sidelines”, he promised and are determined to respond “decisively” to Vladimir Putin’s challenge and to support Ukraine. He then called an immediate extraordinary meeting of the Cobra committee on emergencies in Downing Street, with the leaders of the government and national security, before addressing with a speech to the nation to reiterate the accusation to the Kremlin tsar of having chosen the path ” of an unprovoked attack “. The road “of the bloodbath and destruction”.
Words echoed among others by his foreign minister, Liz Truss, who, like him, said she was “horrified”, and by the head of the defense, Ben Wallace, according to whom Moscow’s “false narrative” does not deceive anyone and Putin will be judged. from history to the legacy of the “theft of a foreign territory”. A “theft” that London intends to help “punish” with an unprecedented escalation of new anti-Russian economic sanctions, prepared in concert with NATO partners – to whom BoJo has urged an urgent summit – the content of which will be illustrated in the afternoon by the prime minister himself in the House of Commons. Meanwhile, the condemnation of Moscow is unanimous and very harsh, from the leader of the Labor opposition Keir Starmer to the Scottish independence first minister Nicola Sturgeon. Although there are some complaints, from the media and beyond, on the “weakness” attributed to the first package of sanctions adopted by the premier since recent days: a package that, even in the words of the conservative president of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Tom Tugendhat, veteran of the ‘Afghanistan and neo-cold war hawk, would have “encouraged aggression” rather than dissuade it.
Among the common people of the island, indignation and anguish seem to prevail: reflected in the protests expected today in front of the Russian embassy in London, after those animated on the eve of hour X above all by immigrants of Ukrainian origin: to denounce a war machine that so far no one has been able to stop.