Russia’s mask slips – just as ours are no longer compulsory
World of Politics with Harry McGee
No sooner that one face mask is removed than it’s replaced by another – and a new global crisis begins. On Tuesday the Cabinet signed off on a decision that will essentially result in the end of Covid-19 restrictions in Ireland. No longer will masks be required in Irish society.
There is some symmetry to it. Two years after the first case was identified in Ireland, it is an acknowledgement that the tide is now ebbing and that particular global crisis is receding.
And then another mask arrived; a baddy’s mask – and on this side of Europe at least, there is little doubt who was wearing it.
After many weeks of rising tension, Vladimir Putin announced in a televised address that the Russian Federation will officially recognise Donetsk and Luhansk, the two breakaway areas of Ukraine.
It is a dangerous escalation. The editorial in The Irish Times on Tuesday described the action as a “dangerous and unilateral escalation that appears to set the path for Russian aggression.
It continued: “An all-out assault on Kyiv and eastern Ukraine which the Russian president threatened in a rambling and fiery speech from the Kremlin, could occur at any moment, plunging Europe into its worst security crisis since the second World War.”
Putin’s speech was reportedly rambling but also fiery. He essentially denied the sovereignty of Ukraine describing it as an entity that was “created by Russia”.
He also confirmed that Russian troops would occupy the two contested territories (they already occupy part of them) but did not say if they would move to secure the parts of those two regions not controlled by Russian-backed militia.
It also accused Ukraine and its president Volodymyr Zelensky of escalating shelling on the border of Ukraine and the disputed territories. But no evidence was produced to back those claims.
For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.
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