Zelenskiy is a master of mobilising his nation’s defence. But his plight must not become a plaything of western politics

An iron maxim of war is to imagine what your enemy most wants you to do, and not to do it. Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine is floundering. He has lied to the Russian people to justify it. He has told them it is not Ukraine but Nato and the west that seek their defeat and his overthrow. That is why they must support him in his fight. To a large extent they have done so.

Nato has so far been scrupulous in not playing Putin’s game. It has stood aloof from active military support to Ukraine’s President Zelenskiy, as have its individual member countries.

How naive I was to think that Rishi Sunak would protect the poorest from the heaviest blows of the cost of living crisis

This was a great “levelling down”, with two-thirds of Rishi Sunak’s giveaways in his spring statement going to the top half of earners. At least the chancellor had the good grace to abandon the words “levelling up” and “net zero”, and he barely even mentioned “pensioners” as he impoverished the already poor while giving a little bonus to gas-guzzling SUV drivers.

Why be shocked? God knows how many Tory budgets and mini-budgets I have covered in a lifetime mostly ruled by Tory governments, yet still, somehow, I can be taken by surprise. The sheer naked venality still takes my breath away. Surely a chancellor wouldn’t choose to do the wrong things, knowingly, when he has the power to set the country in a better direction?

Polly Toynbee is a Guardian columnist

The prime minister’s incompetence cost Nazanin dear. She was a pawn in a chess game, dependent on the judgment of a man who has none

Just when you thought you couldn’t take any more bad news, a sudden bright spot on the horizon: Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, along with another detained British-Iranian Anoosheh Ashoori, are flying back to the UK from Tehran airport. Hopefully, they’ll soon be home.

It is nearly six years since she was first detained. In that time, she has been imprisoned, separated from her daughter, she’s suffered unimaginable mental distress, and known the cruellest false dawn as her original sentence for spying ended, only for her to be rearrested for “propaganda activities”. Her husband, Richard Ratcliffe, who has been through two hunger strikes, ended the second with the simple, devastating decision that their daughter “needs two parents”.

Zoe Williams is a Guardian columnist

Barbican, LondonWith programmes that include three of their greatest native composers, the Czech Philharmonic’s visit felt momentous and deeply moving

There was absolutely no chance that the first of the Czech Philharmonic orchestra’s two concerts in London this week would be anything other than a special occasion, for musical and non-musical reasons alike. And so it proved.

As the first international orchestra to play in the Barbican Hall since the start of the pandemic, the Czechs would have drawn full houses anyway, especially in programmes featuring three of their greatest native composers. But the invasion of Ukraine supercharged the opening evening even more. Czechs know better than anyone what a Russian invasion is like. The orchestra rose to the occasion with its trademark warm intensity of tone, but also with flashes of a rare fire.

Though global prices are spiralling, fuelled by Russia’s war in Ukraine, this is no reason to drop rewilding

Should we plough up Britain? Many people seem to think so. Even before the Russian invasion of Ukraine, food prices were rocketing. Now they have reached an all-time record. The National Farmers’ Union of Scotland has called for Scotland’s feeble environmental measures – paying farmers to plant hedges, cover crops and introduce beetle banks – to be rescinded, so that food production can be maximised. Others insist that rewilding is a luxury we can no longer afford.

It is true that the world now faces a major food crisis. Climate breakdown has begun to bite. Heat domes and droughts in North America and storms and floods in Europe and China last year damaged harvests and drove up prices. By February, the cost of food was 20% higher than a year earlier.

George Monbiot is a Guardian columnist

Since David Cameron’s 2013 U-turn, wind and solar power have been sidelined. Do you believe Boris Johnson will do better?

In the grip of the energy crisis, gas prices are already due to increase by 50% in April, and will spike higher later in the year, while the chancellor’s modest mitigations do little for unaffordable bills. Boris Johnson is about to produce an energy strategy to cut reliance on Russian imports and speed UK generation. He wobbles on fracking.

But before he boasts some “world-beating” plan, hold on to this salient fact. If the Tories had not blocked progress on renewables and insulation over the last decade, Britain would already be generating more clean energy than the amount provided by the fuels imported from Russia.

Polly Toynbee is a Guardian columnist

You could hardly imagine a frostier welcome for these desperate people. The comparison with Europe tells you everything

One and a half million desperate Ukrainian refugees. Fifty British visas. It beggars belief.

In time of war we should keep emotional responses in proportion, but sometimes the hypocrisy is intolerable. Boris Johnson is frantically – and blatantly – traipsing his Churchill act through the capitals of Europe. He hurls abuse at Vladimir Putin and promises Ukraine guns and missiles, aid and sanctions, persecution of oligarchs, anything short of soldiers. But when asked to do the one concrete thing that might directly relieve that country’s agony, he reverts to type. For god’s sake keep these Ukrainians away from our shores. Remember the ark of the Brexit covenant.

The last few days have sealed Ukraine’s place in the global imagination – and for Russia, that’s a big problem

History has broken into a sprint. Changes that were imagined to be the work of generations, or even centuries, have happened in days. Geopolitical shifts whose impact will endure for decades have come in hours. All wars are accelerants, but Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine is remaking the world before our very eyes.

Start with national identity. The way nations see themselves, and are seen by others, is meant to be the stuff of evolution: slow and gradual, the layers added in increments. And yet Russia’s brutal attempt to swallow up its neighbour has changed something profound in little more than a week.

Jonathan Freedland is a Guardian columnist

The UK government is directing its impotent fury at the oligarchs it has courted for 20 years. It will achieve little

We yearn to help. Wrong must be put right. Something must be done. The agony was plain on Boris Johnson’s face as a Ukrainian berated him for refusing to impose a no-fly zone on Russia. When an outrage is being perpetrated and untold numbers of people are dying hourly on our screens, impotence is misery. So we loudly voice our support of Ukraine. We hate Vladimir Putin, hate oligarchs, hate Russians. It eases our pain.

The early stages of war are always moments when reason is told to leave. As the drums of battle roll, courage demands emotion and unity is all. The only resolution is death or glory. Talk of compromise is treason. This is especially true in Europe, with its long history of bilateral conflicts that demand to be seen as “world wars”.

Simon Jenkins is a Guardian columnist

The child maintenance system is still heavily biased against women – and our system for addressing that is a shambles

Men allow men to behave badly to women. That pervasive misogynist bias is often obscured by the optics of more women in boardrooms, in politics, and as public experts. But follow the money: it always tells you where power lies.

From its misbegotten conception in 1993, I have followed the fate of the notorious Child Support Agency, now rebranded but worsened as the Child Maintenance Service (CMS).

Polly Toynbee is a Guardian columnist

Throughout the harshest years of austerity, Nick Forbes kept Newcastle going with ingenious measures. We need more like him

Political talent is in short supply. So is a willingness to step up and take the burdens and the blows of office. The leader of Newcastle city council, Nick Forbes, has been toppled as a result of destructive tribal shenanigans, likely to deter others from giving up most of their life to become councillors. All political careers end in failure, goes the old dictum, and it’s usually so.

But Forbes’s career has been no failure. As leader of the council for 11 years, he steered his city through the lost decade’s savage cuts, protecting vulnerable people where he could and upholding Newcastle’s pride with ingenuity and political imagination.

Polly Toynbee is a Guardian columnist

John Harris is joined by Dan Sabbagh, the Guardian’s defence and security editor, and the Guardian columnist Zoe Williams to talk about Vladimir Putin’s shocking decision to invade Ukraine and its implications for British politics.

To hear Guardian columnist Jonathan Freedland and former US ambassador to Nato Ivo Daalder talking about Joe Biden’s response, search ‘Politics Weekly America’ wherever you get your podcasts

The influence of ultra-rich Tory donors is more extreme than at any time in living memory

Imagine that a hostile power managed to infiltrate the UK’s government. Imagine that it set out to demoralise and debilitate this country, destroying our sense of common purpose, undermining our stability and trashing the lives of many of our citizens.

Imagine that it had to operate below the radar, within the structures of a nominally democratic system. Let’s follow this thought experiment for a moment. What would such a hostile force set out to do?

Watching the misfortunes of Boris Johnson or Novak Djokovic is deliciously satisfying – and unmistakably human. But is it wrong to submit to our basest instincts?

No one is especially shy about the anger they feel about the partygate shambles in Downing Street, nor should they be. We are all a bit more discreet, though, about how enjoyable it is to watch the prime minister’s downfall. It hits every base of funny, from the slapstick to the surreal; a comedy home run. But there is something delicious here that is richer than humour. To see a chancer unmasked is a very particular pleasure.

Likewise, I would happily give you my thoughts on the international tennis elite and their stance on vaccination. But why it was so droll to see Novak Djokovic detained in and then deported from Australia I would struggle to say; I never had anything against the man.

A colossal amount of power is wielded by dangerously few donors, with just 10 people donating a quarter of Tory funds

Another week, another sewage outflow of corruption into the polluted river of Tory politics. Are voters so profoundly cynical that no political bribery or MPs touting for contracts shocks them? Polling suggests the country is not losing its sense of smell.

The time may soon be here to take up John Major’s call in the Guardian to clean up party funding and stop dirty donations from distorting democracy. For that, the public has to swallow what it deplores: state funding for political parties. Every inquiry has concluded there is no alternative.

After 70 years, retiring in good health to hand over to Prince Charles would be good for the monarchy and the nation

This May, the Queen will celebrate 70 years in office, her platinum jubilee. She is already the longest-serving British ruler and, by then, will be second only to Louis XIV among European monarchs. Such longevity in office is phenomenal and will merit national congratulation and celebration.

The Queen has performed her duty of symbolising the British nation over an extraordinary era, from the end of empire, through joining and leaving the European Union, to a global technological revolution. She has known 14 prime ministers, from Winston Churchill to Boris Johnson. Though her “rule” is powerless and largely ritualised, she has performed with energy and dignity. She has steered her office away from controversy, and retained a sincere public affection. Given her bizarre occupation, she has been well-cast.

Jessica Elgot and Polly Toynbee question the prime minister’s ability to apologise after Keir Starmer is harassed by an angry mob. Plus, Giles Kenningham and Tim Durant examine the staff shake-up at Downing Street

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