It goes without saying that what is happening in Ukraine is terrible and totally unjustified.

Sadly it does not look as if it will end any time soon.

As in the law of unintended consequences, Vladimir Putin’s intention to prevent any further expansion by NATO has been thoroughly undermined by his unprovoked attack on a neighbouring country. As a result Finland has pivoted to being amenable to joining NATO and even Sweden, the neutral country par excellence, is thinking about it.

What Putin hoped to achieve by attacking Ukraine and killing its citizens is incomprehensible. What is certain is that he will now have made Ukrainians implacably opposed to close ties with Russia, still less to incorporation into it. I am reminded of the English King Edward I’s campaigns to subjugate Scotland, the single most important factor in forging a sense of Scottish nationhood, and still relevant over 700 years later. Something similar to this will be Putin’s legacy. From now on, no matter the outcome, Ukrainians will not trust Russia or its intentions for a very long time indeed.

On Charles Stross’s blog there is an appeal from the writing community in Ukraine for everyone to make their best efforts to help Ukraine and to inform Russian citizens of the true situation.

Nevsky Prospekt, (or Nevsky Avenyue) is St Petersburg’s main street, running more or less east from the Admiralty Building near the Winter Palace at the River Neva end in the west to the Moscow Railway Station and, after veering slightly southwards at Vosstaniya Square, to the Alexander Nevsky Lavra Monastery. (We didn’t go that far.)

This poster/billboard of Vladimir Putin was on a road leading to the General Staff Building:-

General Staff Building arch, Winter Palace behind:-

The Prospekt itself has many fine buildings like this pinkish grey one with great detailing:-

And something calling itself Grand Palace:-

And this church, set back from the street:-

Part of the way up the south side is this set of colonnades with shops:-

Then there’s the Kazan Cathedral:-

With its fountain:-

The fine building across the street and back a bit is almost hidden away:-

The shooting down of airliner MH17 over Ukrainian airspace was a tragedy – but more likely arising from the cock-up rather than the conspiracy wing of history. Surely no-one seriously thinks that the powers behind either side in the Ukraine fighting intended their minions to shoot down a passenger aircraft? It was clearly done by a trigger-happy clown not subject to much in the way of discipline or command and control as in a regular army. Unfortunately this sort of thing happens in civil conflicts.

The consensus that it was “Russian” rebels who did it is probably correct. That they ought not to have had the weapons to allow them to do it is also a given. But I suspect that Vladimir Putin is raging that it has put him – as the overwhelmingly likely ultimate source of the arms involved – in the wrong. One more reason for the US and EU to portray him as a villain and to increase sanctions.

Yet, unless it blows up into something bigger – in the hundredth anniversary year of the devastating fall-out of an assassination in the Balkans that prospect cannot be overlooked – in four year’s time will most people, apart from the families of the deceased for whom it will linger forever, remember it? Very few gave a toss about the contretemps Russia had had with Georgia in 2008 during the Sochi Winter Olympics earlier this year.

Yet we have our Deputy Prime Minister, Nick Clegg, calling for the World Cup due to be hosted by Russia in 2018 to be stripped from that country. I wish him luck with that. The site of World Cups is in the purview of FIFA and that organisation doesn’t take kindly to outside interference.

What makes his remarks even more counter-productive in terms of his stated objective is that Clegg has said that England might host the tournament instead. Anyone who had any knowledge of FIFA at all would know that is a non-starter.

Twonk.