Cancel all expatriate Russians’ visas and residency permits

Letters to the editor: our readers share their views. Please send your letters to letters@independent.co.uk

UK defence secretary Ben Wallace addresses media at a meeting of the Joint Expeditionary Force nations (PA)

Now that Russia has publicly separated the occupied regions in eastern Ukraine, from Ukraine, the free world has a choice of continuing to be dictated to, or act. Early indications suggest a plan exists to deal with Russia’s aggression; however, as many have already stated, severe sanctions should have occurred when Russia orchestrated the annexation in eastern Ukraine and certainly with the capture of Crimea.

Here’s a recommended sanction, which can be used at the slightest sign of aggression: cancel all expatriate Russians’ visas plus residency permits, giving Russian passport holders 72 hours to leave the country. It would be necessary to stop Russians holding dual nationality and for the duration of Russia’s aggression, no visas would be issued to any Russians. You can be sure Russia would reciprocate this sanction, which would focus companies’ minds on whether they want to do business with Russia, particularly using expats.

This strategy would need to be implemented by all free world countries and could be triggered, for example, when Russia starts military exercises which are “aggressive” or false flag incidents.  Economic sanctions would still be required; however, deporting Russians at the early stage of Russian aggression would mean their government has to explain this to its own population.

Jeremy Daines

Surrey

Vladimir Putin’s rambling and at times near hysterical address to the Russian people exposes a deep-rooted sense of grievance, paranoia and an irrational desire for national vengeance in a way Europe has not seen since the 1930s. Indeed his reference to overthrowing “puppet regimes” and annexing Russian minorities back into the motherland is disturbingly similar to many of the “Lebensraum” themes in Hitler’s Nuremburg speeches.

The pretext of annexing the Donbass region of eastern Ukraine and eventually the entire country because the minority Russian people there are allegedly being oppressed and therefore welcome being invaded, is the same pretext Hitler used to occupy Sudetenland and eventually the entire Czechoslovakian nation. If left unchallenged by the west it could act as a precedent to annexe the Baltic states or even Finland or Poland and other sovereign states where either minority Russian speakers still live or were once part of the Tsarist or Soviet empires.

Paul Dolan

Cheshire

Cost of lateral flow tests

Those who can’t afford lateral flow tests will not buy them (I should imagine tests will come quite low down on the list of essentials – certainly well below food, rent, heating, and clothing for the many who can’t afford those either). They might well, however, add to the cost of dying, in terms of NHS treatment, increased occupation of NHS beds, ever-longer waiting lists and potentially social care for orphaned children.

A simple solution: make tests free for all those on benefits. Will this government do that? I won’t hold my breath.

Katharine Powell

Neston, Chester

I heard Boris Johnson yesterday saying that free lateral flow tests would still be available for the vulnerable. He’s missing the point. When a vulnerable person tests positive it is already too late: it’s their contacts who need to be tested.

Three times a week we visit an infirm relative in a local care home, and do LFTs each time. If we take Covid into that care home, it won’t be “living with Covid”, but potentially dying with Covid. Our family has personal experience of how LFTs can break chains of infection: last summer, when our granddaughter tested positive before we were to meet up with another family; and just this weekend when our grandson tested positive before returning to school after half term. In each case, LFTs stopped onward infection.

David Watson

Henley-on-Thames

I’ve read that Boris Johnson is about to “give people back their freedom” by scrapping the legal requirement for people who test positive for Covid to self-isolate, as well as ending free tests and cutting the funding for the ONS weekly Covid-19 infection survey.

In the “free society” he is envisaging, we will enjoy the “freedom” to infect others with Covid, and he will have the “freedom” to break the law and get away with it.

But how, in his view, can having to pay for tests and losing the last reliable source of information about the pandemic be “a moment of pride”, and how is it going to enhance our liberties?

Chiara Contrino

London N17

Follow your lead, PM? Won’t be hard

So, in order to “live with Covid” we now have to take “personal responsibility” for dealing with it. This guidance comes from a man who shook hands when the advice was not to shake hands; who often failed to wear a mask when mask-wearing was obligatory; and who apparently attended parties when social gatherings were banned.

If this is the level of social responsibility we need to show, then achieving such low standards should not be difficult for anyone.

A Sutton

York

Middle East minister job scrapped

Our loving husband and father, Anoosheh Ashoori, remains a hostage in Iran on false charges and really for just being in the wrong place at the wrong time, with the wrong citizenship. Since his arrest in 2017, we have been watching the UK government’s failed efforts to secure his release. Time and again, we have been assured that his situation, and that of other British hostages, is a priority for the prime minister and the Foreign Office.

However, this week we learn that the post of Middle East minister is being abolished and responsibility for Iran rolled into the Europe minister brief (‘Boris Johnson accused of “Little Britain approach” for scrapping Middle East minister job’, News, 16 February). This poses the very serious question of how much a priority securing the release of Anoosheh and others will be, or ever truly was. The prime minister is still yet to accept our request for a meeting. In the 1655 days since our ordeal began, we have not even been granted a phone call.

At a time when negotiations with Iran are at their most sensitive, and the fate of hostages hangs by a thread, it seems a bizarre choice to abolish the one post that would guarantee due attention to their case. It is, therefore, our sincere hope that James Cleverly MP makes it clear as soon as possible that he will dedicate sufficient time to our case. It may seem more appealing for a politician to spend their time on the geopolitical situation in Europe, but their first duty must be to their citizens and none more so than those taken hostage solely because they are British.

Sherry Izadi

London SE12

An end to A-levels?

Angela Epstein suggests a new 11-plus, effectively devaluing A-levels, as an additional exam for sixth formers and conflates this with the idea of psychometric testing (‘We need an 11-plus for sixth formers to mark out the stars from those who’ve benefited from the pandemic’, 21 February).

In an era where we are encouraged to seek diversity of thought perhaps she might first consider who designed the psychometric tests in the first place. Yes, white male scientists. Results have shown at least an issue of cultural bias which discriminate on ethnic lines.

How about looking at our continental neighbours where performance over the school years determines grades and not one day’s standard. If A-levels aren’t fit for purpose then better less tinkering or add-ons but a system fit for purpose in modern times.

Jane Alliston Pickard

Edinburgh