Politics: an idiot abroad

By Richard North - February 2, 2022

It’s bad enough having Johnson making an idiot of himself at home. But when he goes abroad to do it, it really would be nice to disown him and pretend he had nothing to do with us. It would, of course, be even nicer to disown him altogether, but beggars can’t be choosers.

But, like it or not, Johnson was in Kiev yesterday, supposedly representing us – and we didn’t have a say in the matter. He seems to have this unique gift (if you can call it that) for dribbling out the most fatuous of phrases, turning an otherwise serious occasion into another episode of “Have I Got News For You”.

This time it was the idiot speaking alongside Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky, telling him that sanctions will hit Moscow “as soon as the first Russian toe cap” crosses further into Ukraine.

I don’t know if Johnson realises it (probably not), but Russian soldiers’ boots don’t have toe caps. They never have had, nor the Soviet soldiers before them. Traditionally, they wore Kirzachi, their equivalent of the jackboot (still worn by ceremonial troops). It give’s some insight into the idiot’s mind, though. He probably has a mental image of WWII British soldiers in hobnail boots, marching down dusty French lanes.

No doubt, his Ukrainian hosts were very polite and humoured him – just supposing they had the first idea what he was talking about (I don’t think their soldiers have toe caps either).

Seeing that he had come all the way to give them some money (about £88 million according to some press reports), they certainly weren’t going to disagree with him publicly on his “take” on the threat of a Russian invasion, after he had dismissed suggestions it had been exaggerated.

“I have just got to say that is not the intelligence we are seeing. There is a clear and present danger”, the idiot prattled. “We see preparations for all kinds of operations consistent with an imminent military campaign. Our view is that time is urgent and this is something that needs to be addressed”.

Only yesterday, in fact, we saw a reasonably competent piece from Dan Sabbagh and Luke Harding in the Guardian headed “Ukraine: west’s fears of imminent attack not shared in Kyiv”, conveying the belief that Putin’s goal is the long-term destabilisation of Ukraine, with the Russian leader possibly having other objectives than invasion.

It is a bit of a stretch in any case to associate anything Johnson says with “intelligence”, or indeed the British intelligence community – not too distant from its glories in Iraq and Afghanistan. But officials are apparently warning that Russia is “two to three weeks away” from assembling a 150,000-plus invasion force.

This “intelligence” seems to match the predictions of independent analysts relying on satellite imagery and other open-source, public domain material – the “trainspotters” as I call them – who are flooding the internet with images of Russian military vehicles, many of them loaded on flatcars.

This is the sort of thing that has the Mirror wibbling about Russian firepower continuing to “surge” towards the Ukrainian border, gathering in the Belarussian town of Kalinkavičy, “which sits over the border from Kyiv and could be a launch point for an invasion”.

Kalinkavičy, as everyone knows, is a town in the Gomel Region of south-eastern Belarus, located beside the Pripyat River, opposite the town of Mazyr. Not altogether coincidentally, it is the site of one of country’s most important railway junctions, which might explain why we’re seeing the Russians there, lining up on flatcars.

As for invading the Ukraine from that location, the most direct route is via the Chernobyl exclusion area which, as the BBC so helpfully reminded us in 2013, is in “one of Europe’s more remote corners, a site surrounded by forest and marsh” – just the ideal direction for an armoured thrust.

Nevertheless, this ratcheting-up, as the Guardian calls it, has helped propel the Ukraine story on to British newspaper front pages at a time when the news in Westminster has been dominated by whether Boris Johnson can survive the “partygate” scandal.

This suggests it would be simplistic to say that the attention is entirely cynical. The concern, it says, is genuine in the security community, which is still recovering from the criticism that it failed to predict how fast the Taliban would overrun Afghanistan last summer.

This time, we are told, it will be possible to say the public have been given fair warning if an attack were to happen, with Johnson saying on Monday that there was “a plan for a lightning war”.

If possible, though, that explanation is even less credible, redolent of that self-same “security community” wanting to cover their backsides rather than being accused once again of being caught out. After all, if Putin doesn’t invade, it can always put this down to the “robust” western response.

But, even while Johnson was winging his way over to Kiev yesterday, the situation was developing into high farce. One of the trainspotters had managed to spot some flatcars in the Mozyr District – not a million miles from Kalinkavičy – loaded with a consignment of BMP-1 infantry combat vehicles.

When I sent a copy of the pic to Pete, he responded instantly with the comment,  “antiques roadshow” – and that it was. The BMP-1 was first introduced into the Soviet Army in 1966. It was something of a revolution at the time – a next generation armoured warfare concept appearing at a time when the British Army had only just introduced the FV 432 “battle taxi”.

The BMP-1 saw service in Egyptian colours in the 1973 Yom Kippur war, when a number of deficiencies were identified – some of them quite serious. Other armies were copying the concept, so the Soviets acted fast, to produce the upgraded BMP-2 (in the early 80s) and then the BMP-3, which was produced in limited numbers from 1987 to the present day.

From that period, the BMP-1 has rarely been seen outside museums – it is even rare in the armies of third world countries. And here we are, with examples popping up on a train in Mozyr District, in pristine “Russian Green”, a colour scheme no longer used by the Russian Army.

Thus, the idea that the Russians have any intentions of mounting an invasion with BMP-1s is stretching credulity to the breaking point. With the other geriatric and unimproved equipment being carted around the countryside, one gets the impression that the only way the Russians could “plan for a lightning war” is if they have block bookings with AA Home Start.

But there is another aspect to this. An invasion is about numbers – “shock and awe” and all that. And, as this recent paper conforms, if the Russians make a move, we should expect to see divisional formations on the move.

And here, there is a huge discrepancy. While the “trainspotters” have been picking up penny packets of military equipment, moving a single tank or motor rifle division requires between 1,950 and 2,600 railcars, comprising as many as 34 to 50 trains. Nothing like that level of train movement has been reported.

For Johnson having flown back from Kiev, therefore, the Russians and their “lightning war” are unlikely to provide any relief. While a Telegraph letter has its writer “abhor the notion that this prime minister represents our country on the international stage”, he faces a fractious House at PMQs, today and it’s back to business as usual. The publication of Gray’s “update” has resolved nothing as allegations continue to mount.

To add to his woes, Johnson must explain to his own party why he is preparing to scrap the “Brexit bonfire of EU red tape” in favour of pursuing increasingly unpopular “net zero” rules, while multiple papers are complaining about the £8.7 billion loss on wasted PPE.

Perhaps he might be wishing that he’d stayed in Kiev, volunteering for the Ukrainian Army, alongside the girlie soldiers. For, as the Beatles noted in their “Back in the USSR” song first released in 1968 – two years after the appearance of the BMP-1 – while “Moscow girls make me sing and shout”, “the Ukraine girls really knock me out”, and “leave the West behind”.