PM must stand up to Putin’s menace
“THE WORLD needs action.”
Sir Keir Starmer’s message to Moscow yesterday was crystal clear.
He underlines international revulsion at Vladimir Putin’s cynical snub to a peace deal in Ukraine.
While Volodymyr Zelensky is offering a 30-day ceasefire, the brutal tyrant of the Kremlin is only interested in intensifying the slaughter.
The PM’s military summit in London on Thursday is a sign that this crisis is reaching a new level of risk in Europe.
As he made clear, planning is now moving to an “operational phase”, with every avenue being explored to stop Putin’s “appetite for chaos”.
With the future role of the US unclear, the European leaders will have to deploy every tactic at their disposal.
One crucial step is to block the Russians from any route back to the £250billion of their frozen assets that still sit in European accounts.
This money will form a key part of any peace negotiations if Putin ever does agree to talks.
But with the cost of Ukrainian reparations already estimated at half a trillion dollars, he must never lay his bloody hands on the cash.
It is vital that every seized rouble is spent on rebuilding and rearming Ukraine.
Protect our kids
MONSTERS using AI to churn out child abuse must be tackled head on.
Technology Secretary Peter Kyle said he was “shaken to the core” after seeing how this evil tide is swamping the internet.
In one morning the Internet Watch Foundation witnessed 1,500 reports, any one of which can contain thousands of these vile images.
From tomorrow tough online laws will force tech giants to combat criminal activity on their platforms or face swingeing fines.
Nobody wants artificial intelligence to be stifled by needless regulation.
But we welcome any move to put a stop to the sub-humans who use technology to abuse children on an industrial scale.
Big spending’s Scary
LABOUR’S crackdown on Whitehall waste has thrown up some bizarre examples of civil service largesse.
In one case, the Foreign Office used its official Government credit card to splurge nearly £700 at a store selling cardboard cutouts of the Spice Girls.
Whoever wasted this public cash must be told to stop right now.
