Wimbledon’s decision to ban Russian tennis players, including world No 2 Daniil Medvedev, is Russophobia gone mad. It implies that Britain regards all Russians as colluders in the actions of the Russian state and in Vladimir Putin’s outrages in Ukraine. This follows several European countries halting visas for Russians. The west appears so in thrall to Putin that it is abandoning its proclaimed liberal values and behaving like a pale shadow of the Russian leader himself.
The Russian civil rights academic Dmitry Dubrovsky has been declared a “foreign agent” by the Russian state, putting him at risk of imprisonment and worse. He was in Prague with his family at the time of the invasion of Ukraine. His travel permit expires next month, but each country to which he has applied for residence, including Britain, either limits his stay to weeks or orders him to return to Russia to reapply.
