Ukraine - to intervene or not to intervene.
Moral Maze
BBC
4.4 • 623 Ratings
🗓️ 28 January 2022
⏱️ 43 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
President Putin insists that he has no intention of invading Ukraine. In amassing troops and weapons along the border, the Russians are merely ‘protecting their national interests’. Meanwhile NATO, the US-European military alliance, is busy reinforcing its eastern member states with ships and planes. Our own Prime Minister has issued dire warnings that Russia will not be allowed to harass a smaller neighbour in this way. So, who is right? Is there a moral imperative for us to protect a fledgling democracy that seems to be under threat? What, if anything, can we – or should we – do to support Ukraine? And what moral arguments do we have, to help us decide?
Perhaps this is just aggressive posing by both sides that will drift on and die down. But what if it becomes something more? What if it embroils us in a European war? And if that happens, who will be to blame? Given the record of the UK and the West in Afghanistan and Iraq, do we even have the appetite for another foreign intervention? Is the very idea morally dubious? And, in any case, doesn’t the size of Russia’s nuclear arsenal make it impossible for us to call Putin’s bluff? With Global Governance Professor Mary Kaldor; Russia Expert Keir Giles; Newspaper Columnist Simon Jenkins and Kyiv University Political Scientist Taras Kuzio.
Produced by Olive Clancy
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | BBC Sounds, Music, Radio, Podcasts. |
| 0:05.2 | Good evening. Ukraine has always been the blood-stained cockpit of Europe, |
| 0:09.7 | the second largest, second poorest country on the continent, forever on the fault lines between empires. |
| 0:15.7 | Stalin starved up to seven million Ukrainians to death. |
| 0:19.4 | Hitler killed almost as many. |
| 0:22.6 | Ukraine emerged from the collapse of the Soviet Union as a fledgling, if flawed, democracy. Now it seems threatened by |
| 0:27.7 | its former masters, with 100,000 or more Russian troops massed on its borders. Mr. Putin says |
| 0:33.6 | Ukraine is part of Russia's area of influence, and it's his country that is threatened |
| 0:38.3 | by the expansion of the NATO alliance. The West has responded by sending military |
| 0:43.3 | reinforcement to NATO's eastern members and warning that sanctions would be imposed on Moscow |
| 0:49.2 | if the Russians invade. What, if anything, is our moral responsibility to Ukraine? Are there parallels with the 1930s |
| 0:57.4 | and the democracy's inability to deter and control Nazi aggression? Is the idea of the ethical |
| 1:03.2 | superiority of the West, a morally dubious proposition in itself? Have the often tragic consequences |
| 1:10.2 | of our invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan put us off |
| 1:14.1 | the idea of military intervention abroad. What could we, what should we do about Ukraine? That's our |
| 1:21.2 | moral maze tonight. The panel, Anne McElvoy, senior editor at The Economist, Asaaka, |
| 1:25.4 | the Libertarian Marxist from the Navarra Media Group, |
| 1:28.1 | the historian Tim Stanley, |
| 1:29.4 | and Matthew Taylor, |
| 1:30.2 | chief executive of the NHS Confederation. |
| 1:33.2 | Anne McKelvo, this was very much your neck of the woods, wasn't it? |
| 1:37.4 | Would you describe yourself as a dove or a hawk in this context? |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from BBC, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of BBC and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.