The foreign secretary’s belligerent comments on Russia reduce Ukraine to a pawn in the Conservatives’ power struggle
The foreign secretary, Liz Truss, is playing with fire. On Wednesday night she described Russia’s Vladimir Putin as a “rogue operator” lacking rationality, and with “no interest in international norms”. As a result, she said: “We will keep going further and faster to push Russia out of the whole of Ukraine.” She is clearly revelling in her imagined proxy war on the Russian bear and no one in Whitehall appears able to restrain her.
The use of the word “we” publicly identifies Britain’s interests with Kyiv’s. Truss calls for ever more economic and military aid to be sent to Ukraine, and such aid now teeters on the brink of overt engagement with Russia. She appears to want Russia’s other dissident neighbours, Moldova and Georgia, to join the alliance. Though Putin is irrational and unreliable, Truss argues that he is susceptible to deterrence and will not react recklessly to her escalating belligerence. She nowhere mentions the risk involved in her desired escalation, let alone the possible compromises of peace. Hers is tabloid diplomacy.
Simon Jenkins is a Guardian columnist
