Andrew Marr: What's going on in Russia is potentially 'world changing', but we in the West are pretty much in the dark
26 June 2023, 18:24 | Updated: 26 June 2023, 18:30
TWAM Mono 26.06
The West is "in the dark" about what's really happening in Russia at the moment and NATO may need to be on high alert over reports of a potential Russian attack on a Ukrainian nuclear power plant, Andrew Marr says.
"Our theme tonight is the three words journalists and indeed politicians never ever want to say: We… don't… know.
"What's going on in Russia at the moment is potentially earth shaking, world changing, a historical pivot of a kind that even in these extraordinary times, we haven't really experienced before.
"But on all the big questions, we in the West are frankly pretty much in the dark. What is the real nature of the deal between President Putin and the rebel leader Yevgeny Prighozin? We don’t know.
"First, Prighozin was a traitor, with Putin calling his armed rebellion a stab in the back and promising that he would face the inevitable punishment.
"Next Prighozin did a deal with the dictator of Belarus, Putin's closest ally, and it turned out he could flee there and wouldn't face criminal charges after all.
"Now, the Kremlin says yes, he does still face charges of mutiny.
"On Russian TV a pro-Putin pundit said the Prighozin problem should be resolved with by - I quote - a bullet in the forehead.
"Is the rebel Wagner leader, inside Belarus, really safe from Putin’s revenge? We don't know. In fact, where is President Putin? We don't know."
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He continued: "You’d expect this outbreak of mayhem on the Russian side to allow the Ukrainian army its big chance to attack. Are they? Again, we don't really know.
"Today they have crossed a bridge successfully over the river Dnipro where they now face one of the last well prepared Russian regiments. Is this the big attack? We don't know.
"Finally, is it really true that the Russians have developed and approved a plan to blow up the enormous Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, as the head of Ukraine’s Defence Intelligence told the New Statesman?
"If so, that matters particularly because a new resolution in the US senate states that the destruction of a nuclear facility, dispersing radioactivity into NATO territory would be an attack on NATO requiring an immediate response.
"These are very dangerous times indeed but the fog of war is rolling all around us and rarely has it been so dense and so thick. We can't see through it properly and so, my friends, we do not know.
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"At the weekend, when Rishi Sunak was asked his views on the Russian crisis by the BBC’s Laura Kuennesberg, he replied with what the comedian Ben Elton then said was a meaningless, evasive word-salad.
"I think what Sunak was really trying to say is - look, I might be the prime minister, but I haven't the faintest idea - not a hunch, not a hint, not a Scooby-Doo. All we can do here and now for you is to test, with humility and restraint, what might be happening and what could happen next."
