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Everyone knows that too much stress can be lethal. Hence it’s logical to infer that the greatest number of job-related deaths would be caused by the most stressful jobs.

These, according to my painstaking research, are (in this order): military personnel, police officer, firefighter, social worker, broadcaster, newspaper reporters, emergency dispatcher, mental health counsellor, anaesthesiologist, A&E nurse.

Well, let me tell you: comparatively speaking, all of these are sinecures involving no health risks whatsoever. Relegating them to that lowly status is the most dangerous job in the world: top executive in the Russian oil industry.

In the two years that have passed since Putin decided he had had enough of Ukrainian sovereignty, 18 holders of such jobs have died under mysterious circumstances. The latest such demise was announced yesterday by Lukoil, one of Russia’s biggest oil companies.

Its vice president, Vitaly Robertus, died at 53, for reasons not divulged. Robertus is the fourth Lukoil executive to die since the beginning of Putin’s war. One of his colleagues, Chairman of the Board Vladimir Nekrasov, died of a heart attack last October. But the other two deaths were rather, shall we say, baroque.

Nekrasov’s predecessor, Ravil Maganov, was treated for a cardiac complaint in hospital. His condition was so serious that he fell to his death out of a sixth-floor window, a known side effect of heart trouble. And in May, 1922, another top manager, Alexander Subbotin, died during an ESP séance run by a shaman.

Lest you may think that Lukoil is the only Russian oil company suffering such personnel attrition, Gazprom is giving it a good run for its money.

A few days before the invasion, Leonid Shulman, manager of Gazprom Investa, was found dead in his bathtub. He had died of multiple knife wounds, all of them, according to the suicide note, self-inflicted. One would think that an obviously intelligent chap should have thought of a less demanding method of suicide than using himself for knife practice, but there you have it.

Then the day after the invasion, Alexander Tulyakov, Deputy Treasurer, was found hanged in his Petersburg flat. The contents of the suicide note haven’t been revealed, possibly because no note existed.

Doing business with Gazprom can be as dangerous as serving on its board. Thus Yuri Voronov, Director General of a major Gazprom contractor, was found floating in his swimming pool. He had been shot in the head point-blank, which had to be ruled suicide even in the absence of a note.

On 18 April, 2022, former vice president of Gazprombank, Vladislav Avdeyev, his wife and 13-year-old daughter died by what was described as murder-suicide.

Avdeyev was believed to be so jealous of his wife that, before topping himself, he shot not only her but also their daughter. Shakespeare could have got to the bottom of that family drama, but I can’t. All I can do is speculate about the daughter’s role in that triangle, but shan’t for fear of offending your sensibilities.

Another murder-suicide at about the same time involved a company in a different line of work. Vasily Melnikov, head of the medical technology concern MedStom is supposed to have done the deed with a knife. He first killed his wife, then his two little sons, then himself. According to the family and neighbours, theirs was a loving close-knit family, but hey, what do they know?

But back to the hydrocarbon industry and its jinx. That Russian gremlin seems to ignore international sanctions and travels globally with ease.

Former head of the gas company NOVATEK, Fyodor Protosenya, and his family settled in the Catalan resort town Lloret de Mar. On 18 April, 2022, the police of that town reported that Mr Protosenya had first killed his mother and sister, then hanged himself in the garden. His son categorically stated that his father was no murderer.

Closer to home, almost exactly a year ago another oil magnate, Michael Watford (né Mikhail Tolstosheya) was found hanged in the garage of his Surrey house. He emigrated to Britain in the early 2000s, changing his name and citizenship, but there is no statute of limitations in Russia. Shortly before his death, Watford had told his friends he was scared of Putin’s kill-list, to which he had been “added two years ago”.

In January, 2023, Dmitry Pavochka, former Lukoil manager, provided material proof of the government warning ‘smoking kills’. He fell asleep with a lit cigarette in his hand and burned himself to death.

A month later, Vyacheslav Rovneiko, co-founder of Ural Energy, was found unconscious in his house. For all the doctors’ efforts, he died in hospital of indeterminate causes.

The most recent oil death, on 5 February this year, struck Ivan Sechin, 35, whose father Igor owns Rosneft, where Ivan himself was an executive. Igor Sechin isn’t just any oil billionaire, but also one of Putin’s closest cronies whom many regard as the dictator’s unofficial deputy. Ivan’s death was ascribed to the same diagnosis as Alexei Navalny’s: blood clot.

Please remind me not to apply for any top position in the Russian oil industry. Such jobs seem to be too demanding by half.

Then again, similar death rates have been recorded among Russian journalists, dissidents and any opponents of Putin who didn’t manage to flee Russia in the nick of time (and even some who found what they thought was a safe haven in the West).

I think the annals of medical science should be expanded to include a new phenomenon, ‘sudden Russian death syndrome’. My innate modesty won’t let me claim all credit for this vital contribution to medicine. One, I must add, that’s denied by such a respectable expert as Mark Galeotti.

Prof. Galeotti points out any number of possible explanations for that spate of mysterious deaths, from the general Russian propensity to suicide to professional hits commissioned by business competitors.

The first possibility is refuted by Russian immigrants in the West who rise to high positions in the oil industry (when I lived in Houston, I knew quite a few). All of them courageously resist the temptation to kill themselves and their whole families. The second possibility may well be a factor, but again, during my 10 years in Houston, I never once heard a story of, say, an Exxon president ordering a hit on a Tenneco chairman.

In any case, Prof. Galeotti ought to know that the Russian energy industry doesn’t function according to the laws of competition and free enterprise. It’s wholly controlled out of the Kremlin, where Putin and his closest cronies decide who prospers, who goes bust and, more to the point, who lives and who dies.

Russia is a fascist gangster state, a megalomaniac crime family with global ambitions. So we shouldn’t look for far-fetched explanations. Let’s just pull the old Occam’s razor out and accept that criminals act in criminal ways: murderers kill, thieves steal, embezzlers pilfer – and Putin’s Russia acts in character.

Illegal migrants, mainly from Syria and Iran, are adding new touches to the Damascene experience.

The original story involved Saul, a full-time persecutor of Christians in Jerusalem. The High Priest was so happy with Saul’s zeal that he decided to give him new responsibilities.

Saul and his retainers were sent out to chase Christians in Syria but, as Paul later told the story, a funny thing happened to him on the way to Damascus. A bright light shone from heaven and God asked him a trick question: “Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me?” (In those days, God still hadn’t learned to speak in street English.)

Saul couldn’t give a satisfactory answer to that question. Hence he instantly became a Christian, changed his name to Paul and made the phrase ‘on the road to Damascus’ proverbial.

Well, today’s Syrians prove that a similar experience can also occur on the road from Damascus.

They arrive in Britain by rather unconventional methods, such as clinging to the undercarriage of a lorry or packing themselves into a rubber dinghy. Upon landing, that daring act entitles them to such benefits as living allowances and free accommodation, sometimes in four-star hotels.

But it doesn’t entitle them to the right to stay. Of course, they can do so illegally, and many follow that path, but that involves looking over the shoulder to see if immigration officers are lurking in the shadows.

So they apply for asylum, some successfully, some less so. At this point, one would think, the rejected applicants only have two options: either to go back or to go illegal.

Nothing especially interesting so far, is there? But here comes the third option, one that has inspired the above story of Saul/Paul. For those pious Muslims can greatly improve their chances of getting asylum by claiming they’ve had an experience similar to Saul’s.

As a bearded chap walks to the Regent’s Park mosque, a blinding light shines, and a voice thunders from heaven: “Ahmed, Ahmed, why deniest thou me?” Or perhaps “Why d’you dis me, mate?” (God has since learned how to talk proper.) At that moment, Ahmed realises that the way to asylum lies through Jesus Christ.

Off to the nearest church he goes, gets baptised and reapplies for residency, saying that, as a devout Christian, he feels unsafe in his homeland. That’s it, Paul is your uncle, Mary is your aunt. The Visas and Immigration Office opens its arms and welcomes the brother in Christ to the fold.

When I first came across such stories, I was incredulous. After all, His Majesty’s Government is more likely to be biased against Christians than for them. Also, one would hope that our public servants can see through such a transparent ruse.

Alas, they can’t. This raises the question of what to do about it. Taking God’s name in vain is one thing, but taking it in bogus applications for asylum is quite another. So how can we identify fake Christians?

A similar problem arose in 15^th century Spain, when their Catholic Majesties Ferdinand and Isabella decided to rid the country of Muslims and, while they were at it, also Jews. Many Jews then went through fake baptism, while continuing to practise Judaism in secret.

They were called Marranos or conversos, the former being devious crypto-Christians, and the latter all new Christians, whether genuine or not. The Holy Inquisition, first instituted in the 12^th century, was given the task of sorting them out, setting a useful precedent for the UK Visas and Immigration office to follow.

However, call me a sceptic and a cynic, but I can’t quite see that venerable department employing priests trained to examine new Christians on the fine points of doctrine. For one thing, I’m not sure how many vicars and priests could themselves pass such tests. And then there’s the stylistic incongruity of a receptionist at a government office telling a visitor: “Father Ignatius will see you now, Ahmed”.

So much more highly should we praise the Rev Matthew Firth for his ingenious solution to the vetting problem. He introduced a more involved and rigorous process for baptising asylum seekers from Syria and Iran, whom I shall call reversos. The vicar insisted that they first had to involve themselves in the life of the church, especially by attending services.

And what do you know, a miracle occurred. According to the vicar, the number of Muslims who had found Christ instantly “fell off a cliff”, and those people just “melted away”. If so, that makes those reversos not only mendacious but also lazy.

Anglican services typically last about an hour, so attending a few wouldn’t be overly onerous for robust young males (the dominant demographic among asylum seekers). They could then share a pint and a bacon sarnie with the vicar, thereby providing further proof of their apostasy from Islam. A few Sundays like that, and the baptismal font awaits.

Those reversos belie the fashionable belief that religion is useless. Unlike most of the indigenous population, they’ve found a definite use for Christianity. That outdated creed can now do what cards do in three-card monte: trick the innocent. That broad category includes HMG and, by association, us all.

A piece of avuncular advice to my fictional Ahmed and other reversos: remember to keep saying “There’s a God other than Allah, and Mohammed isn’t his prophet”. Who knows, you may get not just asylum but full citizenship. British Christians need people like you.

Whenever a magazine or a newspaper runs a test asking the question in the title, I take it. Yes, I know I have an appalling eye for physical detail, and yet I can’t help resisting the challenge. So predictably I fail.

As I did this time, looking at the Mothering Sunday photo of a radiant Princess of Wales and her three children. The photo was released by the Palace to quash spreading rumours about Kate’s health. Alas, that noble effort had the opposite effect.

For some people are more observant than I and they know a Photoshopped image when they see it. Those eagle-eyed pedants counted 16 things wrong with the picture, from the autumn leaves in the background of the photograph supposedly taken this weekend to the fewer than the regulated number of fingers on Louis’s hand.

(Spoiler alert: there will be no other spoilers from me. Try to find the other 14 errors, see how you get on. Unprompted, I would have spotted none.)

As a result, AP, AFP, Reuters and Getty Images, which at first ran the picture, have now withdrawn it. One statement said: “The AP later retracted the image because at closer inspection, it appears that the source had manipulated the image in a way that did not meet AP’s photo standards.”

And the British media refused to publish the photograph, except to illustrate stories similar to this one. Considering their unbounded love for paparazzo offerings, they must be complimented for their reticence.

This is a very serious business indeed, and not just because the Palace seems unable to employ competent retouchers. Nor is there anything wrong with publishing an official picture that has been either touched up or taken when the model was younger.

Why, I am myself guilty of such legerdemain: the photo adorning my books and blogs was taken a few years and many illnesses ago, making it rather flattering to my current appearance. I use it not out of vanity, but because it’s the only professional high-res photo of myself in my album.

But that doesn’t matter: no one really cares about my looks and health, family and friends excepted. Our future queen is a different story, and her health has far-reaching ramifications.

Back in January Kate had abdominal surgery from which she is still recovering. That gave rise to fears about her long-term health, which this clumsy photo was supposed to allay. Such fears go beyond the public’s voracious appetite for royal gossip.

For Kate is indeed our future queen, which makes her health a constitutional issue. And when the Palace releases dubious health bulletins or fake photographs, the issue becomes the proverbial hot potato.

The first bulletin in January said the princess had checked into the London Clinic for an abdominal operation. Words like ‘minor’ or ‘routine’ didn’t come up, but they were implicit.

The only specific information provided was that the operation had nothing to do with any kind of cancer. And oh well, lest we forget, went the afterthought, Kate would stay in hospital for a fortnight and then convalesce for two to three months. Nothing to worry about.

Those PR chaps take us for idiots, I thought. Anyone who has a modicum of medical knowledge would know that something untoward is going on.

My own empirical knowledge of medicine has been acquired on its receiving end, as a veteran of many illnesses, some of them deadly, and nine operations, some of them abdominal. And some of those were performed at the same London Clinic (thank God for private insurance), where my wife has also had two operations.

Neither Penelope nor I have ever spent more than three post-op days in hospital, which I’d say is par for the course. Hence, loath as I am to play cracker-barrel physician, weeks in hospital and months of convalescence betoken a serious condition.

The most widespread abdominal surgeries involve removal of the appendix, gall bladder, malignant or benign tumours, liver transplants or else hernia repair. My appendix and much-abused liver are still in place and I’ve never had a hernia, but I’ve had the pleasure of experiencing the other kinds, and none involved anything even remotely like Kate’s stay in hospital and subsequent convalescence.

All this sounds solipsistic, but I’m not bragging about my illnesses – there’s nothing to brag about. All I’m saying is that my experience suggests that Kate’s condition is far from trivial. The attendant events reinforce this impression.

First, Prince William cancelled at the last minute his attendance of the memorial service for his godfather, King Constantine of Greece. That was especially odd since William’s father, King Charles III, was also unable to attend because he is recovering from cancer treatment. Kensington Palace cited “personal reasons”, which sounded ominous in context.

Then the Department of Defence announced that the princess would attend Trooping of the Colour in June, only for that announcement to be hastily withdrawn. One possible inference is that the Department jumped the gun, and Kate isn’t expected to be fit enough to attend public events even six months after her operation.

Most Britons, emphatically including me, feel a great deal of affection for the Princess of Wales. Unlike her late mother-in-law, she has gone about her royal duties with dignity, responsibility and grace. That’s why we are genuinely concerned about Kate’s health.

But – and this is something Kate seems to realise, whereas her late mother-in-law didn’t – royal personages, especially those likely to accede, are defined not so much by their personalities as by their functions. And the functions they perform are vital to the constitution of the realm.

This doesn’t mean that every detail, salacious or otherwise, of the royals’ lives should be exposed to the gawking, gasping public. But it does mean that their subjects should be informed of issues with constitutional implications.

Since Kate is the wife of the future King William V, her physical wellbeing is definitely of constitutional import. So, much as I hate the phrase “we have a right to know”, in this case we do. Meanwhile, I – and millions of people in Britain and around the world – wish Kate the speediest recovery. We need her.

P.S. Just so that we are clear. The same event has three different names, and which one you choose says something about you. Mothering Sunday is conservative/Christian. Mother’s Day is woke/secular. International Women’s Day is woke/communist. Thus, the photo under discussion is supposed to have been taken on Mothering Sunday.

Pope Urban II had a clarity of vision that’s beyond today’s prelates. He kept things simple, without encumbering straightforward issues with wishy-washy casuistry.

The Holy Land was in the hands of Muslims who abused Christians and threatened the survival of the eastern churches. The only solution was to defeat Muslims and reclaim the Holy Land, to which end Urban began to preach the First Crusade.

Everyone taking part, he declared, would be doing God’s work. Hence all his past sins would be forgiven – going on that death-defying mission was redemptive.

Urban thought in the binary categories of good and evil, as behoved his job. The man currently occupying his throne, Pope Francis, eschews such primitive simplifications. Instead his mind draws inspiration from the nuanced thinking of the secular intelligentsia.

Thus stimulated, His Holiness shared his geopolitical ideas in an interview he gave to the Swiss broadcaster RSI. The interview was recorded last month, and it’s scheduled to be aired on 20 March.

The Pope correctly identified the on-going wars in the Ukraine and the Middle East as today’s key events of international politics. In both cases, he kept the issue of good and evil open-ended, without once offering any moral judgement of the warring sides.

Thus abandoning the language of his day job, His Holiness gave his audience the benefit of vox DEI, as in Diversity, Equity, Inclusion. Implicitly, he seems to believe, there is nothing to choose between the two sides in either conflict. Therefore the sole concern should be saving lives.

And if the only way to achieve that purpose is unfurling the white flag and capitulating, then so be it. Abject surrender is a sign of courage and strength, explained His Holiness in language that would have made George Orwell envious.

That was a daring foray into the field of semantics, consonant with the modern tendency to use words in a meaning contrary to the dictionary definition. Lest you may accuse me of twisting the pontiff’s words, here’s what Francis said about the war in the Ukraine:

“I think that he is stronger who sees the situation, who cares about the people, who has the courage of the white flag to conduct negotiations. [My emphasis: I just love this turn of phrase]… ‘Negotiations’ is a brave word. When you see you are losing and things aren’t going well, you must have the courage to negotiate. Aren’t you mortified of how many deaths will ensue otherwise?… Don’t be ashamed to start negotiations before the situation gets even worse.”

Having analysed the situation on the frontline, His Holiness reached the conclusion that the Ukraine is definitely losing – something claimed by few military commentators this side of the Kremlin.

Yet it’s not just his strategic perspicacity that impresses me no end. His Holiness effectively tells the Ukrainian government that, because the war is lost, they must display “the courage of the white flag” to negotiate the best terms of surrender.

First, the few setbacks suffered by the Ukrainian army are as far from defeat as their anterior advances were from victory. Second, surely His Holiness must be familiar with the notion of martyrdom. Some great saints in his religion have chosen death over surrender in defence of what they saw as a noble cause.

If Francis is unfamiliar with Catholic hagiography, a brief visit to the Vatican library could plug the more gaping holes in his education. And perhaps talking to someone who understands such matters will help him to realise that the Ukrainians are dying so that Europe may live. They are defending us all against the onslaught of barbaric hordes – the Ukrainians are today’s equivalent of the Europeans who died to stop the Muslim invasion from the south or the Mongol offensive from the east.

Pontificating, as it were, on the subject so dear to Urban’s heart, Pope Francis had similar ideas on Israel trying to forestall her annihilation at the hands of Hamas savages and the Muslim states behind them. Israel too must negotiate with those who wish to wipe it off the face of the world.

“Negotiations,” explained Francis, “aren’t capitulation. It takes courage not to drive one’s country to suicide.”

Now, neither Zelensky nor Netanyahu has rejected the idea of negotiations in principle. Both, however, refuse to accept the status quo as the starting point. Both leaders will only negotiate on the terms that would make their countries safe in the foreseeable future.

And both the Ukraine and Israel, for all their real or mythical faults, are allies of the West. For Muslim aggression and terrorism are capable of igniting the whole world, as are Putin’s unequivocally stated plans to recreate the Soviet empire.

The Pope should draw his inspiration from Urban II, not Neville Chamberlain. It would be in keeping with his mission if he spoke ex cathedra about the West uniting behind its two vanguards, Israel and the Ukraine.

It would be consistent with his remit to call on Western governments to provide the assistance the Ukraine and Israel need to prevail over their enemies and ours. Instead the Pontiff is making general pacifist noises that play into the hands of both Russia and Hamas.

Perhaps someone ought to remind His Holiness of the bellicosity he showed early in his papacy, when he said that if anyone “speaks badly of my mother, he can expect to get punched.” I’m not sure popping someone in the snout for such a minor transgression is consistent with the letter of doctrine, but it does evoke the memory of warrior popes.

The current interview is more reminiscent of Kremlin propaganda on the Ukraine and Muslim propaganda on Israel. Now, that definitely has little to do with doctrine, either its letter or its spirit.

The other day, members of the pro-Hamas organisation Palestine Action slashed and spraypainted the portrait of Lord Balfour at Trinity College, Cambridge.

Such zealots, sometimes going by the nickname of ‘anti-Semites’, have it in for Balfour, of the Declaration fame. The 1917 document bearing his name undertook to create a “national home for Jewish people” in Palestine. The Balfour Declaration was cited as a legal justification for the founding of Israel in 1948.

Yet much Jordan water flowed under the bridge between those two dates, with HMG doing all it could to redeem Britain in the eyes of Muslim fanatics. After the war, the British tried their hardest to prevent what Balfour promised, a national home for Jewish people.

The Royal Navy harassed ships carrying Jewish survivors of the Holocaust to Palestine, and the incident involving one such ship, the Exodus 1947, created a wave of protests and hunger strikes on both sides of the Atlantic.

British destroyers first surrounded and then engaged the Exodus, killing a crew member and two passengers. They then forced the ship to sail to France, but the passengers, including many orphaned children, refused to disembark, going on a hunger strike instead. (Leon Uris described their three-week plight in his 1958 novel Exodus.)

The British in general fought against the partition of Palestine tooth and nail, eventually voting against the founding of Israel at the UN. That, incidentally, made the USSR vote in favour, on the mistaken assumption that Britain was still a major power capable of thwarting Stalin’s ambitions.

I don’t know if members of Palestine Action are familiar with this history, though I suspect they probably aren’t. But Lord Balfour and his pictorial representations remain their enemy to this day, as are Israelis and Jews in general.

Following the 7 November monstrosity committed by Hamas in Israel, and the latter’s predictable response, pro-Hamas protests (aka riots) have become commonplace in London, as have anti-Semitic attacks on Jews. The situation has got so bad that counter-extremism commissioner Robin Simcox has described London as a “no-go zone for Jews.”

HMG is doing next to nothing to put an end to Islamic fascism in the streets of London, a tendency lovingly kept up by Sadiq Khan, the capital’s mayor and police commissioner. For example, no arrests were made in the wake of the slash-and-spray attack on Balfour’s portrait.

The photograph of that act of vandalism is blurred, so it’s hard to establish the attacker’s race. Such identification, however, would be relevant because pro-Hamas activities involve not only Muslims but also infidel Lefties.

Many of that group are themselves Jewish, which sets up one of those conflicts of pieties that give me a feeling I can only describe as schadenfreude. My own loyalties are invariably undivided, which makes it easy for me to take sides in any conflict.

Yet many of those on both the Left and the Right don’t have that luxury, what with some of their views being not just contradictory but mutually exclusive. And I’m man enough to admit that, rather than sympathising with their conundrums, I tend to gloat in a most un-Christian way.

It was in that shameful spirit that I read today’s letter to The Telegraph whose nine signatories are all prominent British Jews, or rather “Jewish people living in the UK”, as they identify themselves.

A more sensitive person than I would commiserate with the authors: they have to reconcile their self-acknowledged Jewishness with their clearly evident wokery, which is no easy task in the present situation. Jews everywhere tend to support Israel and abhor Islamic terrorism, along with general anti-Semitism. However, for most Lefties it’s the other way around.

Hence Jewish Lefties have to be especially fleetfooted to dance around the problem. Yet even if they are, sooner or later they’ll stumble over it. At that point, they’ll have to select one of their two mutually exclusive pieties. That’s what the authors of this letter have done.

First, they acknowledge that “Anti-Semitism is a very real problem, faced by us for centuries and increasingly in recent months.” Having provided that historical perspective, the authors then explain that some problems are much worse:

“Pro-Palestinian marches [are not] the major problem we face. Many of us join those marches and feel safe on them; indeed we are much more worried by the Government’s branding of them as ‘hate mobs’, and the constant stream of Islamophobia coming from the media and Westminster. We urge care when it comes to reporting anti-Semitism – because doing so in the way you have… risks dividing our communities.”

Righty-ho. Mobs blocking major thoroughfares and screaming “From the river to the sea!” don’t divide communities. The real culprits are government officials who describe London as dangerous for Jews and The Daily Telegraph that whips up Islamophobia by reporting on, say, pro-Hamas fanatics vandalising works of art.

Those nine signatories looked deep into their woke hearts and decided that their politics occupied a larger space in that organ than their Jewishness. One has to conclude that they are either ignorant of geography or else don’t realise that “from the river to the sea” presupposes the extermination of everyone currently filling that space, the six million Jewish Israelis (the number has a nice ring to it, don’t you think?).

Yet conflict of pieties is like Covid. It can afflict everyone, and people on the right of the political spectrum aren’t immune either. Most Americans I know who fit this description tend to be enthusiastic fans of Trump and also equally enthusiastic supporters of the Ukraine’s heroic fight for her survival.

Suppose for the sake of argument that Trump is elected president. His hero-worship of Putin is well-known and amply documented, both by eyewitnesses and his own numerous statements of admiration. Equally well-known is Trump’s understated affection for NATO often expressed through hints that he’d consider taking America out of it.

Not wishing to upset my American friends, I’ll describe their ensuing conflict of pieties as hypothetical rather than assured. So how would they reconcile their affection for Trump with his betrayal of the Ukraine? I’m not saying they are guaranteed to be gored by the horns of that dilemma, only that this is a realistic possibility.

That would present a problem not only for them but also for me. Since mocking Lefties comes more naturally to me than doing the same to my fellow conservatives, it would be harder for me to maintain the role of a sniggering outside observer. Oh well, we’ll drive off that bridge when we get to it, as Teddy Kennedy could have said.

Do you remember Alan Hansen? Whenever a goal was scored, that football commentator would utter the lapidary phrase in the title with real exasperation in his nice Scottish voice.

Looking at Britain’s budget unveiled yesterday by the Chancellor with the oft-mispronounced name, I asked – myself, since no one else was around – the same rhetorical question. My uncouth interlocutor replied with an obscenity I don’t dare repeat here.

Announcing a £2.5 billion reduction in defence spending, Mr Hunt boasted that it’s “already more than 2 per cent of GDP . [Moreover, it] will rise to 2.5 per cent as soon as economic conditions allow”.

Permit me to translate the open-ended promise in the second sentence: economic conditions will never allow it, and defence spending will never rise until it’s too late. In general, Mr Hunt ought to be reminded that defence of the realm from enemies foreign and domestic should be the only non-negotiable part of the budget.

Any responsible government should first decide how much it needs to spend on keeping the nation safe and only then ponder how to distribute whatever is left. And the question of how much is enough should be answered on the basis of the geopolitical situation, not “economic conditions”.

The benchmark of 2 per cent of GDP is what NATO countries have undertaken to spend under normal circumstances. I’ve highlighted the last three words to emphasise that today’s circumstances are far from being normal.

A war is raging in Europe, with neo-fascist invaders openly proclaiming their far-reaching designs on at least the eastern half of Europe, where most countries are NATO members. Putin and his propagandists make no bones about identifying NATO as its real adversary.

Elementary responsibility, common sense and historical experience demand that aggressive dictators be taken at their word – unlike our own politicians they tend to say what they mean and mean what they say.

Under such abnormal circumstances, the figure of 2 per cent of GDP is the barest of minimums that should only serve as a point of departure. And yes, by spending 2.07 per cent of GDP on defence, the UK is regrettably one of only 10 NATO countries meeting that puny requirement.

It’s instructive to see who the other nine such members are. The US apart, they are Poland (her proportion of 3.9 per cent is NATO’s highest), Greece, Finland, Romania, Hungary, Slovakia, Lithuania, Estonia and Latvia.

Notice anything they all have in common? Correct. They all suffered, or were barely able to repel, Soviet domination.

In 1944-1949 Greece was torn apart by a civil war started by the communists with the Soviet Union’s blessing. The government, helped by Britain and America, prevailed in the end, but only just.

And Finland suffered Bolshevik cannibalism twice, first in her own 1918 civil war, then following the Soviet aggression in 1939-1940. In 1918 the Finnish ‘Whites’ routed the Red menace, and in 1940 Finland managed to defend their sovereignty at a cost of almost 10 per cent of her territory.

All the other countries on the list of NATO ‘big spenders’ were either parts or satellites of the Soviet Union. Since that was only a generation ago, the fond memories are fresh in their minds, and they are hastily arming themselves against the blight they are too familiar with, if in a different guise.

By contrast, Western European countries, Britain included, clearly don’t feel the same sense of urgency. Their leaders make all sorts of bellicose statements, but keep their collective hand firmly in their pocket. When it comes to defence, that is.

Chancellor Hunt and the government he fronts have other priorities, and there their generosity knows no bounds. While reducing defence spending by £2.5 billion, they are increasing NHS spending by exactly the same amount.

One of Mr Hunt’s predecessors at 11 Downing Street, Nigel Lawson, said in 1992 that “the NHS is the closest thing the English have to a religion”. The God of that religion is athirst, demanding ever greater sacrifices. Billions after billions are tossed into its voracious innards, where they disappear without a trace or any noticeable effect. But religious piety can’t be measured in any monetary units.

Now, Mr Hunt and just about everyone in government know this perfectly well. To repeat Jean-Claude Juncker’s aphorism for which I absolved him of all his sins, they all know what to do. They just don’t know how to get re-elected once they’ve done it. And that’s all that matters.

Mr Hunt knows as well as everyone in Parliament that failure to increase NHS spending and especially any attempt to reduce it will be immediately punished at the ballot box. However, leaving the realm defenceless in the face of the direst threat in 78 years is something else indeed.

Electoral chastisement will come only if Russia acts on her threat to attack NATO, which may or may not happen, and almost certainly won’t happen before the next election. So Sunak and Hunt are prepared to risk our national survival for the outside, not to say non-existent, chance of staying in power.

Other than that, the new budget points to another choice the government made. The Tories have two ways of approaching the electoral campaign. One, they can effectively say to the voters: “Our policies are drastically different from Labour’s. Vote for us if you agree they aren’t just different but better.” Two, they can say: “Our policies are the same as Labour’s. Vote for us because you won’t get anything different anyway.”

The government is clearly opting for the second strategy. Other than reducing the national insurance tax from 10 per cent to eight, the new budget contains nothing that a Labour chancellor wouldn’t happily sign his name to.

By freezing income tax thresholds, the government is effectively increasing the overall tax burden, a ruinous decision camouflaged with the odd nip and tuck here and there. “Lower taxes mean higher growth,” said Mr Hunt, again showing his familiarity with the sentiment behind Juncker’s quip.

However, he spent the previous weeks dropping hints that he didn’t wish to spook the markets by precipitous tax cuts, the way the hapless Truss and Kwarteng had done. That’s dishonest.

Truss and Kwarteng committed an economic faux pas not by cutting taxes, but by doing so without also cutting public spending. Hunt, on the other hand, is presiding over an economy bending under the burden of promiscuous spending and extortionate taxation.

The attempt to out-Labour Labour will get its comeuppance at the next election, with the Tories almost guaranteed to be reduced to the status of a fringe party, sort of like the Greens. Britain will suffer too, with Labour Full Strength adding its own touches to the Tories’ Labour Lite policies.

One way or another, Britain’s armed forces will continue their descent to the size of London’s Metropolitan Police, with only a slightly bigger arsenal of heavy weapons. Let’s just hope Putin isn’t good at doing sums.

Yesterday was the 71^st anniversary of that day, 5 March. That’s when Sergei Prokofiev, one of the 20^th century’s major composers and arguably Russia’s best ever, died a broken man.

He was only 61, but I did tell you he was broken. The inhuman pressure of life in Stalin’s Russia was too much for him to bear, and his heart gave way.

Hardly a day had gone by that Prokofiev hadn’t been publicly hectored and demonised by nonentities, calling him whatever they were paid to call great men in those days. He’d try to buy a moment’s peace by writing propagandist Soviet works, such as a fawning cantata to celebrate Stalin’s 60^th birthday or one to commemorate the 20^th anniversary of the revolution, but to no avail.

His genius shone through anyway, for genius remains free and irrepressible even with a yoke around his neck. Stalin’s bullies sensed that and went after Prokofiev like a pack of wolves pouncing on a wounded bear.

Prokofiev’s first wife Carolina (known as Lina) wasn’t a genius, but she was guilty of another irredeemable sin: she was Spanish, meaning foreign. And not just foreign, but one from a “capitalist”, at that time also “fascist”, country. She simply had to be charged with espionage and sentenced to 20 years of hard labour.

One might say that Prokofiev brought it all onto himself. After the revolution, he wisely left Russia, but unwisely returned in 1932. Anyone who has read the three volumes of his Diaries knows why.

Prokofiev and his contemporaneous West weren’t a good fit. On the one hand, he had to supplement his composing income by playing piano recitals, a career for which he was less equipped than his contemporary Rachmaninov, a lesser composer but one of the greatest piano virtuosos of his or any other time.

Prokofiev resented having to go on concert tours – like all geniuses, he knew his true worth. And there was another problem that made him disillusioned in the West: he knew his true worth, but the West didn’t, not quite. Prokofiev’s were essentially classicist sensibilities, but the West was demanding a different, atonal, modernist kind of music, best exemplified by Schoenberg, Webern, Berg and – most painful to Prokofiev – Stravinsky, a fellow Russian émigré.

Stravinsky was another magnificent Russian export, and he was deservedly hogging the limelight. Yet Prokofiev, another genius, was denied his fair share of it, one he knew he merited. His pride was wounded, and there were those serpentine NKVD seducers begging him to return and promising him all the glory and riches of the world.

In the end, Prokofiev’s hubris got the better of him and return he did, to the living hell known as Stalin’s USSR. To be fair, at first the Soviets were as good as their word. Prokofiev was feted and lionised, he was encouraged to compose more and more works, and he no longer had to play recitals to survive.

But then the hounding started, shrill (and ignorant) accusations of formalism, demands for propagandist music, sleepless nights spent expecting that proverbial midnight knock on the door, illness. What the post-mortem diagnosed as cerebral haemorrhage finished the job.

Yet not a single Soviet newspaper ran an obituary for one of the few true giants associated with Stalin’s realm. And even the leading Soviet musical periodical only reported Prokofiev’s death in a couple of brief paragraphs.

Just think about it: the Soviet Union was home to only two sublime composers (Shostakovich was the other one), one of them died – and that tragic event barely merited the briefest of mentions on page 116 even in a musical periodical.

There was a good explanation for it: the first 115 pages were devoted to another death, that of Stalin, who died on the same day. Or, to be more exact, Stalin probably died a few days earlier, but his death was only reported to hoi polloi on 5 March. The diagnosis was the same, cerebral haemorrhage, but the circumstances of Stalin’s death were mysterious enough to give rise to rumours of assassination.

The country ignored the passing of one of its greatest gifts to world culture, but threw a fit of hysterical sorrow after one of the most evil men in history croaked. Crowds wept in the streets of Moscow, a human throng tried to crush its way into the Hall of Columns, where those malodorous remains lay in state.

Hundreds of people were trampled to death or had their heads smashed when the crowd threw them against the police vans. Even in his death, Stalin didn’t lose his endless capacity for mass murder.

I don’t know how many of today’s Russians lead a life in which Prokofiev has pride of place. Quite a few, would be my guess, certainly in Moscow. Yet even they have to live a life charted by Stalin and shoved down their throats by his worshippers and heirs.

There was something eerily symbolic in those two men dying on the same day. Stalin won the battle for public adoration then, and he is still winning it 71 years later. But life everlasting has a different pecking order – and assigns different quarters to geniuses like Prokofiev and ghouls like Stalin.

Sergei Prokofiev, RIP.

I’m passionate, you are overzealous, they are extremist. And an outside observer who is none of those things, may think we are all the same.

This ought to remind us that philosophy is largely a science of definitions, which may be objective, subjective, absolute, relative, contingent and anything else you can think of. Now, few of our MPs can ever be accused of being philosophers, and yet they too are currently embroiled in a heated argument about definitions.

They feel politically obligated to rid Britain of extremism, which worthy intention we should all welcome. Yet before we ban something we have to decide what it is that we are banning. Specifically in this case, what is extremism, other than being awful?

That question is a brick wall against which our MPs are banging their heads without ever making a dent. I sympathise with their problem. Any definition of extremism can be either commonsensical or all-embracing, but not both.

One definition they are considering is “an ideology that undermines the rights or freedoms of others”. Alas, rather than being dented, the brick wall is getting sturdier. For a need arises to define the definition, which is never easy whenever it contains the word ‘rights’.

These days this nebulous word is used as a politicised description of aspirations and appetites. We are served up any number of rights: to marriage, education, health, development of personality, leisure time, orgasms, warm and loving family or – barring that – warm and loving social services, employment, paternity leave and so forth. Object strenuously to any or all of those, and you may be deemed an extremist.

The definition of extremism currently mooted in Parliament could easily be applied to, say, someone who finds the NHS ridiculous, abortion and euthanasia barbaric, or a full employment law ruinous. And if it can be so applied, it will be – such is the law of modernity that allows no exceptions.

Our parliamentarians state their objective as “cracking down on Islamism and far-right extremism”. That seems to give a free pass to far-left extremism, which the MPs either don’t recognise as objectionable or don’t believe any such thing exists.

Looking across the Channel, France has just enshrined the right to abortion in her constitution, the first country ever to do so. That could easily put anyone who objects to that practice into the rubric of extremism. Yet in half of the American states, the opposite is true: there an extremist is anyone campaigning for abortion on demand.

In Britain, both pro- and anti-abortion groups have been described as extremist, but the overall tendency is unmistakable on this or any other issue.

Anyone who is opposed to transgender ‘rights’, homomarriage, uncontrolled immigration, abortion, euthanasia, vandalism of history, socialism (as in the NHS), ‘liberalism’ (actually left-wing illiberalism), enforced secularisation, expansion of suffrage, promiscuous public spending, ignoring defence of the realm and so on can easily fall under any comprehensive definition of extremism our MPs are likely ever to agree on.

In other words, conservatism, especially the Christian kind, is certain to be the baby thrown out with the bathwater of “Islamism and far-right extremism”. Keeping it personal, I realise to my horror that I’m as extremist as they come. I really ought to denounce myself before others beat me to it.

By contrast, Thangham Debonnaire, Labour culture spokesman, doesn’t have an extremist bone in her body. Everything about her, except her name, is placidly moderate. In that spirit, she demands that the long tradition of playing Rule, Britannia at the Last Night of the Proms be discontinued.

According to Miss Debonnaire, that patriotic anthem is “alienating” to some people who feel their access to culture is thereby being blocked. And culture, according to her, must be “accessible to everyone”, especially those who are deeply offended by that song.

I don’t know if Miss Debonnaire specifically took exception to the line “Britons never, never, never shall be slaves”, but if she didn’t she should. The entire history of Britain, she must believe, is defined by slavery imposed on others. At the same time Britons themselves are slaves to capitalism, which Miss Debonnaire insists must be urgently “fettered”.

To me, she is a far-left extremist, a category that goes unrecognised in Parliament. Miss Debonnaire, on the other hand, must consider anyone like me as a dangerous far-right extremist to be euthanised at the earliest opportunity. Such is the moderate viewpoint.

Now, any reader, especially a British one, must insist that I can only earn the right to criticise other people’s definition of extremism by offering my own that meets all the exacting requirements. That I can’t do and, moreover, no one can.

No definition of extremism or any other political category can ever be all things to all men. One side’s extremist is another side’s man taking a principled stand, and vice versa. If we insist that all sides, and therefore all viewpoints, are equally worthy and valid, then good luck trying to define extremism – you won’t be able to.

Yet our MPs are bound by the vow of liberal egalitarianism. They can’t, for example, say that Christianity isn’t just different from, but better than, Islam, if only because our civilisation was founded as Christendom and not Islamdom. Or that republicanism is a political heresy. Or that – and here I’m stepping on Miss Debonnaire’s toes – that only classical, which is to say real, music should receive government grants.

If our MPs really want to define extremism, they have to choose sides. Either they see themselves as promulgators and defenders of our civilisation or its enemies. Once they’ve made that choice, then and only then will their task become possible.

In fact, it would become easy. For example, I’d define extremism as any fanatical and especially violent expression of hostility to our civilisation.

At this point, any MP trained in logic would demand that I define our civilisation, and I’d be only too happy to oblige. Our civilisation is Christendom, with all our core beliefs, tenets, laws and morality traceable back to the bedrock of our founding religion.

I’m aware of how woefully unhelpful I’m being. No MP sitting on any front or back bench shares my definition of our civilisation and consequently of extremism. In fact, they’d probably regard my definitions themselves as extreme and, if declared too vociferously, extremist. And if by some accidental mutation a few MPs would agree with me, they’ll keep that view to themselves if they wish to remain MPs for a while longer.

That’s their right – as long as they realise that exercising this right makes it impossible for them to come up with any sound and coherent definition of extremism. And if they can’t define it, they can’t really ban it.

They can’t even ban ‘Islamism’, which is only consistently pious Islam, without lumping it together with Christianity, Judaism and, in the long run, conservatism. Anything else would be seen as discrimination, and trust our legislators to give that good word a bad name.

It seems churlish to complain about a slight to my family while three great British heroes are suffering the same indignity. Fair enough, public good should come before private gripes.

But before I tell you of the affronts perpetrated on British history and my family (in that order!), I have to reveal the identity of the perpetrator.

She is Louise Simpson, ‘headteacher’ of what the papers describe as “the elite £17,000-a-year Exeter School in Devon”. Her proper title should be ‘headmistress’, which is what headteachers of girls’ schools have been called in England since the 19^th century.

Now, I realise that the old title is gender-specific and therefore offensive to our brittle sensibilities. But the problem shouldn’t have arisen in the first place because Exeter was founded in 1633 as a boys’ school. Such schools have always been run by headmasters, not headmistresses, which stands to reason, as traditions usually do.

However, modern obsession with ideological madness demands that the sex pack be thoroughly reshuffled, and augmented with dozens of new cards. That, I believe, is called ‘inclusivity’, a mass psychosis that produces many unsavoury symptoms.

‘Ms’ Simpson (she predictably insists on this perverse honorific) suffers from one such symptom in its most virulent form. That’s why she dumped the names of Sir Francis Drake, Sir Walter Raleigh and General Sir Redvers Buller from school houses, saying they don’t “represent the values and inclusive nature” of the school.

A pedantic stickler may argue that a private boys’ school charging £17,000 a year ipso facto falls short of the highest standards of inclusivity. But that apart, such historical vandalism is as subversive as it is these days ubiquitous.

Sir Francis Drake was the first Englishman to circumnavigate the globe. More important, he defeated the Spanish Armada in 1588, making sure that ‘Ms’ Simpson’s bailiwick is called Exeter School and not Escuela de Exeter. Sir Francis also earned my undying gratitude because I’m so tone-deaf to Romance vowels that I wouldn’t survive in a Spanish-speaking country.

Sir Walter Raleigh also took part in that linguistic triumph, but then he blotted his copybook by playing a leading role in the English colonisation of North America. But for him, ‘Ms’ Simpson might not have sleepless nights worrying about the possibility of another Trump presidency.

Yet according to ‘Ms’ Simpson, Raleigh and Drake “had less than positive connotations”. Also cancelled for bearing the stigma of the same connotations is General Sir Redvers Buller, the hero of Zulu and Boer Wars, whose statue adorns central Exeter. In addition to their CVs, all three culprits were native Devonians, which is to say local boys. But that cuts no ice with ‘Ms’ Simpson.

Essentially, she and her ilk violate one of the seminal points of English common law by making today’s moral fiats, such as they are, retroactive. Messrs Drake, Raleigh and Buller couldn’t comply with the exacting demands of modern morality because they were unable to anticipate their advent centuries later.

Otherwise I’m sure Drake would have welcomed the Spanish invasion in the name of diversity, Raleigh would have sung From the Atlantic to the Pacific on marches in support of Red Indian rights, and Buller would have let the Zulus eat as many missionaries as they fancied.

Of course, ignorantia juris non excusat, as the Romans used to say, but ignorance of the law that doesn’t exist must at least be taken as a mitigating circumstance. Not for ‘Ms’ Simpson though.

Also caught in her crossfire and slated for similar cancellation are several benefactors of Exeter School, and here we finally come to the gaping personal wound I’ve suffered. For one of them is identified as Sir John Daw, who happened to be my wife’s maternal great-uncle.

Since Uncle John, as he’s known in the family, died when Penelope was a little girl, she couldn’t contribute many personal touches, other than the fact that he didn’t have much time for little girls, specifically her.

What she is absolutely certain about is that Uncle John never circumnavigated the globe, defeated the Armada, colonised America, wasn’t rumoured to be romantically involved with Elizabeth I or for that matter any other woman, and fought neither Zulus nor Boers nor anyone else.

Sir John was a successful solicitor, Chairman of the Devon County Council and a philanthropist. The last word does share one of its roots with ‘paedophile’, but even ‘Ms’ Simpson must be aware of the difference. So what’s her problem with Uncle John?

He himself was an Old Exonian, as were most male members of the family, including my brother-in-law. As far as I know, none of them has been implicated in any crimes, real or bogus.

Nevertheless ‘Ms’ Simpson is on a roll, firing broadsides with truly woke abandon. She has the zeitgeist billowing her sails, and her ship will sail on until it runs aground.

I hope you’ll forgive the naval metaphors, but all this talk about Drake and Raleigh has to add this slant to my prose. So I hope all those who observe our civilisation going under will join me in shouting “SOS!” at the top of their lungs.

Russians don’t just kill Ukrainians. They also do an increasingly good job killing other Russians.

Street and domestic violence, including murder, have shot up in the past two years. Some explanations of this upsurge are instantly obvious. Others lie deeper under the surface, which may make them even more destructive over a long term.

The most obvious reason is the demobilisation and homecoming of Russian soldiers completing their combat tour. Some of those veterans were murderers, rapists and even cannibals recruited out of prison camps. They were promised an amnesty in exchange for a six-month stint at the front, too good an opportunity to miss.

The promise was faithfully kept, and surviving serial murderers went back into the community, which community they promptly began to terrorise. I don’t know if a carte blanche to post-demob murder was part of the deal, but one could easily get that impression.

Yet even law-abiding recruits are so thoroughly brutalised in the army that they don’t return home the same rosy-cheeked innocents they were at the recruitment office. Beatings, torture and arbitrary executions are routine in the Russian frontline army. Soldiers refusing to go on suicidal attacks (‘meat storms’ in Russian army slang) are beaten to a pulp, raped, kept in icy holes filled with corpses, shot without trial, have their skulls smashed with a sledgehammer and so on.

A few months of frontline service, where such practices are routine, can turn even previously normal lads into sadistic brutes, especially since they are encouraged – often ordered – to treat Ukrainian POWs and civilians with sadistic brutality. And then they descend on their native towns and villages, with the line separating war from peace smudged in their minds.

A woman walking the streets of a Russian town looks, often also talks, just like her Ukrainian counterpart. A demob-happy rapist may ignore the nuances and treat the Russian the way he treated the Ukrainian.

Nor is it just violence against female strangers. Wife beating is a traditional Russian sport, and society has always treated it with good-natured indifference. I often cite Dostoyevsky’s Diary of a Writer in which he describes a peasant who beats his wife within an inch of her life, which, according to the author, doesn’t diminish in any way his spiritual superiority over any Westerner.

Russian women, known for their forbearance, accept black eyes, busted lips and broken bones with equanimity. They often repeat the old proverb, “If he beats, he loves”, a sentiment that hasn’t quite caught on in the West.

That meek acceptance of savagery has been enshrined in the law. In 2017, perhaps in preparation for things to come, wife beating was decriminalised in Russia. First offenders now risk nothing harsher than a small fine, which puts domestic violence on a par with jaywalking.

That was before thousands of brutalised murderers, looters and rapists returned home with blood on their hands and savagery in their eyes. “Hide, honey, I’m home!” is becoming the slogan of Russian domestic bliss. Those women who dare complain are accused of militant feminism, which Russian courts treat as a terroristic crime.

Against that background, any growth of violence against women shouldn’t strike anyone as counterintuitive. Yet so far we’ve only probed skin-deep.

Deep subcutaneous shifts are occurring in Russian social mores and morality, especially in its relation to violence. For the past 10 years, especially during the past two, the Russians have been exposed to incessant all-pervasive propaganda demonising the 40 million people living just west of the country’s borders as subhuman.

Exterminating them is equated to culling a herd or spraying a field with insecticide. As a result, people’s nerve endings become cauterised and thus incapable of feeling normal human revulsion to violence. Their immune system no longer resists savage acts with the same fortitude; what used to elicit a gasp of horror now elicits an apathetic shrug.

The Russian state is also doing its level best to increase the volume of violence exponentially. Just look at the prison sentences meted out to those perceived as dissidents.

In my day (I left the Soviet Union in 1973), the harshest sentence for dissent was seven years in a labour camp. Most sentences were less severe: for example, my KGB interrogator, Major Sazonov, only threatened me with a year or two.

These days, someone expressing the mildest disapproval of the war can go down for 25 years or even for life, sentences unknown in a post-Stalin Soviet Union. Officially, Russia no longer has the death penalty, but anyone who has glanced at the papers over the past 20 years knows there are ways around that annoying obstacle.

One minor example: the treatment of Jehovah’s Witnesses. They were outlawed in Brezhnev’s Russia, as they are at present. But back in the 1960s they’d typically receive a one-year sentence in a milder camp. Now they routinely get a fiver of “severe regime”, where survival rates are worse than with some cancers.

Beatings and torture in both police stations and prisons are neither exceptional nor even simply widespread. They are so ubiquitous as to be invariable. Throughout the Russian penitentiary system, inmates (including those in remand prisons) are beaten, tortured and raped by their captors. The powers that be don’t just condone or close their eyes on such crimes but actively encourage them.    

Add to this the war itself from which hundreds of thousands have come home crippled if at all, and you can see how the sum total of violence in Russia has gone beyond a certain critical mass. The whole society has become brutalised, with violence accepted as not just a necessary evil, but increasingly as not an evil at all.

Such are some of the traditional values so admired by Putin fans in the West. And these ‘values’ won’t disappear the moment the last shot of the war is fired. With the best will in the world, they’ll take decades to expurgate. And where in Russia have you ever seen the best will in the world?