An honour at last: I’m banned by Putin

The call from Times Radio came out of the blue. Would I like to comment on a report that the Russian Foreign Ministry had banned me from entering Russia? What had I done to deserve the honour of being proscribed by Putin?

I’ve been expelled from a few countries, including Poland in 1982, when I was detained while taking money from western trade unions to the underground Solidarity trade union printing operation. They were working in Warsaw cellars, as in the uprising of 1944, to produce leaflets and reports for Poles. This was after Moscow ordered Poland’s communist government to declare martial law and shut down the communist world’s first independent trade union.

It wasn’t too dramatic. A couple of nights on a  palliasse, enjoying the black bread smeared with smalec – the rich Polish spiced pork lard — and tea. Roger Boyes, today the distinguished Times foreign policy commentator,  was then a young BBC stringer in Warsaw and saw the police bustling me away. In 1979 I had been the youngest president ever of the National Union of Journalists and had led BBC journalists out on their first ever strike, which shut down all BBC news services on radio, TV and on the World Service.

That episode lent me a mini profile as a lefty loud-mouth, so Roger Boyes reported my arrest for the BBC. This woke up the British Embassy in Warsaw. One of HMG’s diplomats arrived to say I would appear in front of a worker’s court on a charge of hooliganism, which seemed fair enough. He gave me a survival kit for the rest of my stay in prison. It was a Harrod’s bag with a jar of Marmite, Ryvita and a copy of Country Life. John Le Carré couldn’t have made it up.

Communism ended eight years later in Europe, but Russian imperialism has never faded. I went to Ukraine in 2005 as Minister for Europe to support the Orange revolution against Putin’s efforts to impose a Kremlin approved president.

I was in Georgia in 2008 after Putin invaded the country and annexed two of its regions. The baleful influence of Angela Merkel, who acted as Putin’s handmaiden in Europe during her long Chancellorship in Berlin, was on display even then. She blocked all efforts to end reliance on Russian energy and turned a blind eye to Putin’s Anschluss with Crimea.

I oppose Putin’s invasion of Russia — just as I opposed the Tory Party under Boris Johnson taking £14 million in donations from Putin oligarchs and welcoming the clear support of Putin for Brexit. Putin dislikes and fears the EU far more than Nato, which has been hapless and helpless in preventing Russian interference and worse in EU member states.

But I have left most writing about the Ukraine conflict to the legions of commentators, one or two of whom have Russian or know Russia or Ukraine.

So I remain baffled at being awarded the honour of being close to the top of the list issued by the Moscow Ministry of Foreign Affairs, saying I was henceforth barred from entering Russia, a country I have not visited in 20 years. I have marched on the odd protest but that is just a London stroll. As ever the UK Left turns a blind eye to Putin’s crimes, while excoriating any concern of Jews worldwide that Israel may be wiped off the world’s map.

I am critical of the support Nigel Farage in England and Jean-Luc Mélenchon have given Putin. Mélenchon is close to Jeremy Corbyn in England and has just called for Zelensky to stand down.

The Russian proscription list is an odd hotch-potch. The biggest quota of British journalists now banned by Putin is from Byline Times, one of the new vigorous journals like the New European (now New World) which have sprung up since the dramatic shift of UK politics to the isolationist Right. This shift followed the ultra-hard Brexit treaty of 2020 imposed by Boris Johnson and broadly accepted by the current Labour government, though it is trying to soften it at the edges.

One day I hope to return to Russia. It is a great nation, but singularly ill-served by its leaders over the last hundred years.

Denis MacShane was UK Minister for Europe under Tony Blair.

A Message from TheArticle

We are the only publication that’s committed to covering every angle. We have an important contribution to make, one that’s needed now more than ever, and we need your help to continue publishing throughout these hard economic times. So please, make a donation.