DOMINIC LAWSON: Is Russia’s invasion of Ukraine proof that the West is taking Putin’s nuclear bluff too seriously?

Why didn’t the Ukrainian government tell the Americans about their astonishing plan to invade Russian territory? Because they knew Washington would have told them not to do it.

The White House is reported to have said this crossed President Putin’s red line, with the implicit threat that he could “go nuclear.”

Two months ago, Putin warned: ‘We have a nuclear doctrine, see what it says. If someone’s actions threaten our sovereignty and territorial integrity, we consider it possible to use all the means at our disposal.’

Now look at what really happened after Kiev captured part of the Kursk region. More than a hundred thousand Russians were put to flight or evacuated. Also, stunned Russian soldiers were killed or captured with the help of Western tanks and weapons.

Putin played down the whole issue during a televised meeting of his security council, calling the shocking seizure of Russian territory “the situation” or “a provocation” and steadfastly refusing to call it an “invasion.”

In a televised meeting of his security council, Putin downplayed the invasion by Ukraine, referring to the shocking seizure of Russian territory as “the situation” or “a provocation,” and steadfastly refused to call it an “invasion.”

On Saturday, Russian rescue workers and volunteers helped evacuate civilians from border settlements in the Kursk region

This is a repeat of what has happened time and time again since Putin launched his all-out war on Ukraine in February 2022: He has made unimaginable threats to the West should they cross certain lines – but has never followed through. At the beginning, he warned in a broadcast: “Whoever tries to thwart us should know that Russia will respond immediately and that this will lead to consequences such as you have never experienced in your history,” adding that Russia “is today one of the most powerful nuclear powers.”

But after initial hesitation, Washington launched a colossal program of lethal aid to Kiev. Putin did not retaliate.

He later issued a dire warning of “attacking new targets” if Ukraine were equipped with the devastating Himars artillery rocket system.

President Biden seemed put off by this, but eventually changed his policy and sent them. What happened? Putin said that their delivery to Kiev “doesn’t change anything in essence.”

He similarly agreed when, despite warnings from Moscow, first Finland joined NATO last year and then Sweden in March this year.

Even after the UK gave Kiev permission to use our Storm Shadow missiles to hit the Russian Black Sea Fleet headquarters in Sevastopol, there was no comeback against this country.

I wrote at the time that Putin’s nuclear threats carried an excessive amount of weight, especially in Germany. Fearing “escalation,” Germany refused to supply Kiev with Taurus missiles.

Footage released by Ukrainian forces on Sunday shows the destruction of a key bridge in Russia’s Kursk region

When Sergei Naryshkin, the head of the SVR (the Foreign Intelligence Service), met his colleague, CIA chief William Burns, in 2022, he “swore that he understood and that Putin had no intention of using a nuclear weapon”

It’s not just that CIA chief William Burns traveled to Moscow in November 2022 to tell his counterpart what the US would do if Russia used nuclear weapons: according to Burns, Sergei Naryshkin, the head of the SVR (Foreign Intelligence Agency), “swore that he understood and that Putin had no intention of using nuclear weapons.”

A month earlier, after Putin began making more explicit nuclear threats, he was rebuked by none other than the Chinese president, his indispensable ally. Xi Jinping declared that all concerned should “jointly oppose the use or threat of use of nuclear weapons.”

In any case, the country that has most to fear from Putin’s nuclear threats is Ukraine, which has now shown what it thinks of them.

My wife’s allergy to bee stings taught me that you should NEVER take risks

There can be no greater tragedy than the loss of a child – especially when that death was preventable. Like 13-year-old Hannah Jacobs, who died in February 2023 from an allergic reaction after drinking a hot chocolate at a Costa in East London.

The coroner concluded in the inquest that there had been a ‘miscommunication’ between one of the coffee shop staff and Hannah’s mother, Abimbola Duyile. The staff member clearly did not understand when he was told that due to Hannah’s acute dairy allergy, her hot chocolate would not be served. made from soy milk.

The mother told the inquest how, after Hannah took a sip of the hot chocolate, made with cow’s milk, ‘suddenly… stood up, went to the toilet and shouted ‘That wasn’t soy milk.’ Within hours, Hannah died from anaphylaxis.

So, it was all Costa’s fault? A closer reading of the coroner’s verdict shows it wasn’t quite that simple. Dr Shirley Radcliffe also noted that ‘neither Hannah nor her mother had an EpiPen with them which had been prescribed’.

I know from experience how important it is for people who are susceptible to anaphylaxis to follow the strict instructions they would have received from their doctor to carry an EpiPen (which injects the dose of adrenaline needed to reverse the life-threatening symptoms).

My wife doesn’t have food allergies: it’s stings from wasps or bees that cause a potentially fatal reaction. Once we were in the garden when she was stung. Within moments her lips swelled up terribly and her breathing became difficult.

Hannah Jacobs – whose photo is held by her mother, Abimbola Duyile – died in February 2023 from an allergic reaction after drinking a hot chocolate at a Costa in east London. Dr Shirley Radcliffe noted that ‘neither Hannah nor her mother had an EpiPen with them which had been prescribed’

We rushed inside and she grabbed her EpiPen and stuck it into her thigh (through her trousers). As suddenly as they had begun, the terrifying symptoms disappeared. Acute food allergies are a far more life-threatening condition than my wife’s. They were described convincingly on the BBC’s Today programme last week by Nadim Ednan-Laperouse — ‘the tiniest amount of allergen can kill you in an hour’ — whose daughter Natasha had died at the age of 15 on a BA flight they had taken together after and bought an artichoke, olive and tapenade baguette at Pret at the airport.

Unbeknownst to them, it contained sesame seeds, one of the many foods Natasha was allergic to.

Mr Ednan-Laperouse and his wife Tania founded the Natasha Allergy Research Foundation and have done fantastic work in raising awareness of this issue.

But I thought during the investigation into their daughter’s death how surprising it was – as she had suffered from a series of acute allergic reactions since she was a baby – that they had not prepared her food for the flight at home, but had bought it from a Pret branch at the airport.

It must be incredibly difficult for parents of teenagers, especially when so much of social life revolves around eating and drinking in public places, to force their children with acute allergies to behave as if every public eatery is a potential death trap. But it is.

As my (now retired) doctor told me when Natasha tragically passed away, “When you have a complex array of life-threatening allergies, it’s crazy to eat out at all. You have to give yourself the best chance.”

It’s a question of where corporate responsibility ends and personal responsibility begins. But those poor children: how brave they had to be, their whole short lives.