OPINION - Emily Sheffield: Boris Johnson is right about one thing — we must never appease Vladimir Putin

Despite a devastating and deserved defeat in yesterday’s by elections, Boris Johnson remains absolutely right in his policy of no appeasement to the Russians. Last week the PM made a powerful speech just before his trip to Kyiv to see President Zelensky. “I don’t believe that option is really open to us,” he rightly stated. “Never mind that abandoning the Ukrainians would be morally repugnant, since they are the victims, and they have an absolute right to defend a free and independent country.”

It is the last line which cannot be understated. Even in late May, the New York Times, despite its stellar reporting on the war, ran an editorial entitled The War in Ukraine is Getting Complicated and America Isn’t Ready, in which it argued it was dangerous to assume Ukraine could win the war. “Russia is too strong,” it said, adding Ukraine should make a “painful compromise” and give up some territories to Russia. The US must understand the futility and stop “taunting” Russia, the editorial continued. It’s a staggeringly confident opinion to hold from across the Atlantic. And yet it wasn’t long ago that there were similar columns being written here: that territories like the Donbas should be given up — that Zelensky would and should make painful compromises. President Macron has hinted at the same in the past. And these opinions are highly dangerous. They are based on decades of Russian propaganda and our ignorance of Ukrainians, who do not have the developed PR machine of President Putin.

Firstly, it is essential to grasp that Ukrainians have proved themselves time and again to have an entirely different nature to their Russian neighbours. As written in an editorial in the Kyiv Independent recently: “We are freedom-loving and have had three revolutions in less than 30 years, while Russians have allowed themselves to be dragged back into the swamp of authoritarianism.” In Ukraine, there is no demand for a violent strongman in power. They feel strong in themselves and it’s there in their history. According to a recent poll by the Kyiv International Sociology Institute, 82 per cent of Ukrainians believe that Ukraine should not give up any territory for peace.

They are a people who do not fear removing their rulers who ignore democratic wishes or are corrupt. The Orange Revolution was because of election fraud and rampant corruption. In 2014, in the Revolution of Dignity, they overthrew their president at a huge cost to themselves, after the extraordinarily corrupt Viktor Yanukovych suddenly decided to not sign a free trade agreement with the EU, despite the Ukrainian parliament overwhelmingly having approved it. Instead, he chose closer ties to Russia. He now lives there in exile under Putin’s protection.

Then there is the assumption that Russia, despite its battlefield losses, is still a superpower with a potent military. This is another fallacy created by Russian propaganda. They have suffered huge losses — thousands of soldiers, vehicles, tanks and many of the territories it invaded in February. Its command structure is weak, its soldiers demoralised, and they are up against a people protecting their homes, who have seen their civilians bombed, raped, hospitals razed to the ground and children murdered. They will defend their freedom to their last.

And even now, we fall into the trap of thinking the Russian people have been tricked by Putin into supporting this war, blinded by misinformation. Too many in Europe are giving credence to this opinion; I heard it only last week on a British stage among a panel of intelligent people — it took a Ukrainian to put them straight.

The Russian population are not victims — we should not free them of the responsibility of a war 70 per cent of Russians support. They have Ukrainian family and friends telling them clearly this is a horrific, unwarranted invasion not “a special military operation”; they have seen their own squares filled with protesters. They are choosing to support Putin’s war. They are not his puppets, terrified into submission — they could rise against him if they wanted to.

As one Ukrainian said to me recently: “In the end Ukraine will win this war. We just don’t yet know the price or the timing. When we did not surrender those first days, we had already won.”

Our Prime Minister has never been more right. Putin cannot be negotiated with. Only stopped. And we need to continue, however long it takes, helping the Ukrainians achieve just that. Anything else is appeasement.

Leaderless Tory rebels help Johnson walk on

There will be rebels cursing they went early on the No Confidence vote. Boris Johnson, despite crushing defeats in Tiverton and Wakefield, and the resignation of Tory Party chair Oliver Dowden today, is technically safe for another 12 months.

Johnson may be limping, even mortally wounded, but he’s somehow still walking.

There is no one individual seriously harrying from the sides to speed his demise. They are not rebels without a cause but rebels without a leader. So the Tories crawl on as strikes build and inflation climbs. Dowden wrote, “We cannot carry on with business as usual. Somebody must take responsibility.”

But we know that that somebody won’t.

Help! I’ve been bitten by the Glasto bug

As I write this I am still negotiating a ticket to Glastonbury. Glasto fever has overcome me, as it does every year. I’ve been eight times or more and as I get older the passion does not subside. Because each time you enter those gates, you steal into a wild metaverse that doesn’t exist anywhere else.

The first time I snuck in — aged 18, climbing a vast wall with a 20-foot drop one side and barking security dogs on the other — I spent two days wandering around, my eyes wide at what I was seeing.

The second was for this newspaper, reporting on Glastonbury, and we stayed for a whole week. Night one was spent camping with my best friend in a local farmer’s polytunnel normally used for growing geraniums. I never wanted to leave. Every night meant journeying into another mad tunnel of experience, singing around the camp fire with Damien Hirst, dancing in silent discos until the small hours, waking up in other people’s tepees.

There were two trips with Vogue, carrying suitcases of couture clothes on our heads, waist-deep in the mud. And watching the White Stripes perform an epic gig — Meg White’s drum solo went down in Glastonbury music history. I think being on stage behind Nile Rodgers as he sang Let’s Dance to a screaming crowd was up there in giving birth to my sons.

You always need to pee, you are constantly dehydrated, exhausted and elevated, and looking for your friends. The mud is horrendous, you don’t sleep, you talk with strangers, have to block experiences in loos you never want to remember and strip naked in the hippy saunas.

What’s not to love?