Has Putin underestimated the West?

Coffee House Shots

The Spectator

News, Politics, Government, Daily News

4.4 • 2.1K Ratings

🗓️ 28 February 2022

⏱️ 12 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Over the weekend, the West unveiled further measures to punish Russia for invading Ukraine. The European Union said it would put limits on the Russian central bank's ability to access its reserve of foreign currency, Finland blocked Russia from its airspace, and Germany pledged that it would increase its defence spending to 2 per cent. Has Putin underestimated western resolve?

Katy Balls speaks to Fraser Nelson, James Forsyth and Isabel Hardman.

Transcript

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0:00.0	The Spectator magazine combines incisive political analysis with books and arts reviews of unrivaled authority. Absolutely free. Go to spectator.com.uk forward slash voucher.
0:26.0	Hello and welcome to Coffee House Shots as Spectator's Daily Politics Podcast.
0:30.1	I'm Katie Balls and I'm joined by Fraser Nelson, James Forsyfe and Isabel Hardman.
0:35.7	The situation in Ukraine continues to evolve. Ukraine of asked for a ceasefire
0:40.8	in talks of Russia. Fraser, what's the latest? It's incredible to think what's happened just over
0:46.8	this weekend. Things I thought I would never live to see have happened in the space of a few
0:51.6	hours. We've seen Germany, for example, saying effectively
0:54.6	is going to behave like a normal military country again, is going to increase its defence spending
0:59.5	to 2% of GDP. You've got Sweden, which has been neutral in pretty much every conflict since
1:04.3	1940, sending 5,000 anti-tank missiles to Ukraine. Even Britain only sent 2,000 of these things. So huge changes in the
1:13.0	German political debate and the Swedish political debate. You've got even Switzerland thinking of
1:17.4	joining sanctions. You've got not just swift sanctions agreed, but central bank sanctions taken
1:23.4	as well, effectively creating the kind of economic encirclement of a nuclear-armed Russia.
1:30.8	It's just incredible how fast things are moving, only a couple of weeks ago. It looked as if
1:36.1	the West was split, that Germany would never agree to swift sanctions, that the Scandinavians
1:41.5	were too fearful of becoming Russian targets to get too close to NATO.
1:46.9	And now you're seeing the reformation, I guess, of the West, but not only the West.
1:53.7	You're now getting Japan, South Korea, who are working out that it's within their interests as well to dissuade Putin, because if he
2:02.4	gets away with annexing Crimea, then a revengeous China might move on Taiwan and start to have
2:08.2	its own aspirations on its own near abroad. So you're seeing this really quite extraordinary
2:14.2	political realignment. And this is going on at the same time as, again,
2:19.6	it's just heartbreaking and staggering scenes in Kiev and Ukraine. It's funny that my wife's
	...

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