Why is a no-fly zone a no go?

Coffee House Shots

The Spectator

News, Politics, Government, Daily News

4.4 • 2.1K Ratings

🗓️ 1 March 2022

⏱️ 10 minutes

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Summary

During a press conference in Poland today, Prime Minister Boris Johnson was confronted by Ukrainian journalist and campaigner Daria Kaleniuk, who took issue with the excuse for not imposing a no-fly zone because it may start World War Three, saying it had already begun.

While it is completely understandable that on the streets of Ukrainian cities that is how it must feel, the UK and the West are committed to not involving themselves with direct military action against Russia. Though the sanctions that have been imposed on Putin's regime are unprecedented, can they work quickly enough to pause the conflict before things get even bloodier?

Katy Balls talks to Isabel Hardman and James Forsyth about how the Prime Minister has been handling this situation so far.

Transcript

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0:37.5	Hello and welcome to Coffee House Shots as Spectators' Daily Politics Podcast. I'm Katie Balls and I'm joined by Isabel Hardman and James Forsyfe. Today the Prime Minister has been to Poland where he has given a press conference on Russian aggression in Ukraine. Isabel, what did he have to say?
0:39.4	Well, he repeated some of the points he's made before
0:42.4	about his sort of confidence that Putin will fail,
0:46.6	Putin must fail.
0:48.6	He did also say that Putin is prepared to use barbaric
0:51.5	and indiscriminate tactics against innocent civilians
0:54.4	and gave the sense, as Liz Truss and Ben Wallace have over the past few days,
1:00.8	that things are going to get a lot worse.
1:03.5	He said that it may take some time for this conflict to end.
1:07.3	The particularly striking things that he said were he ruled out a no-fly zone, which
1:12.6	is something that some senior conservatives such as Tobias Elwood have been calling for.
1:18.9	And Boris Johnson's argument there was that it would basically bring the UK and other NATO
1:24.0	countries into direct combat with Russia, and it would be very difficult to control the consequences of that,
1:31.3	particularly given we've seen the Russian President putting his nuclear forces on high alert.
1:37.3	He also said that the UK might be able to take in 200,000 refugees from Ukraine. This is very much a subject that the government
1:46.8	is on the back foot over after, as we covered in the podcast yesterday, the berry picking visa
1:53.2	debacle over the weekend. And then he was confronted by a campaigner who talked about her
1:58.7	own experiences, those of her family and her colleagues.
2:02.1	She was really on the edge of tears and accused him of not coming to Kiev because he's in Poland,
2:08.0	not Ukraine, because he was afraid and said that just because Boris Johnson wanted to avoid
	...

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