:00:24. > :00:28.Hello and welcome to Dateline London. Russia, Crimea and Ukraine -
:00:29. > :00:31.could this be the beginning of a new Cold War?
:00:32. > :00:34.After the shocking revelations about London's Metropolitan Police, can
:00:35. > :00:46.you trust the guardians of law and order?
:00:47. > :00:49.And is sugar the new tobacco? My guests today are Agnes Poirier of
:00:50. > :00:51.Marianne, Jeffrey Kofman - a writer and broadcaster - and Adam Raphael
:00:52. > :00:55.of Transport Magazine. Vladimir Putin says he does not want
:00:56. > :00:57.a new Cold War although gobbling up part of a neighbouring country by
:00:58. > :01:01.effectively annexing Crimea may eventually lead down that route. Can
:01:02. > :01:04.the Ukraine crisis be resolved peacefully, even if Crimea votes in
:01:05. > :01:13.a referendum to split from Ukraine and join Russia?
:01:14. > :01:18.Everybody says they want to resolve this peacefully. Is that what will
:01:19. > :01:22.happen? I think it is the only way it will happen because militarily,
:01:23. > :01:28.Ukraine stands little chance of defending itself against Russian
:01:29. > :01:32.aggression. What Ukraine does and has been doing successfully is
:01:33. > :01:38.resisting the provocations and not rising to military provocations, not
:01:39. > :01:41.shooting at the Russian soldiers or pro-Russian Cossacks who are
:01:42. > :02:09.blocking Ukrainian soldiers into their bases. Ukraine was guaranteed
:02:10. > :02:12.sovereignty of its territory. There are protests of Soviet flags. Do
:02:13. > :02:21.they want to go back to the USSR? Unlikely. Putin has this pet project
:02:22. > :02:25.about a greater Russian world and reinstating the glory of the first
:02:26. > :02:29.Imperial Russia, then Soviet Russia but Ukraine no longer wants to be
:02:30. > :02:35.part of that world and this is something that has been sort of put
:02:36. > :02:40.into words by Ukrainian protesters time and again. Putin, if you love
:02:41. > :02:46.Ukraine, let it go. He seems reluctant to do so. On the specific
:02:47. > :02:48.issue of Crimea and this boat, is this generally seen in Ukraine as
:02:49. > :02:55.completely illegitimate? It is supposed to be unconstitutional. If
:02:56. > :03:04.they like another people in a country due to secede, they should
:03:05. > :03:10.be allowed to do so. It should be seen as suspicious that they would
:03:11. > :03:15.want to secede now, after a failed attempt. The crisis was resolved
:03:16. > :03:19.back then but it might be resolved now if only given a chance, if only
:03:20. > :03:32.Russia were willing to negotiate with the new authorities in Kiev. He
:03:33. > :03:41.calls the events in Ukraine a coup d'etat. He will not talk to them.
:03:42. > :03:47.How will you not talk to -- how we resolve it if you will not talk to
:03:48. > :03:50.them? The feeling in Ukraine is that Russia is looking for a pretext, in
:03:51. > :03:54.other words is hoping that there will be some shooting and they will
:03:55. > :04:02.say they have to save their soldiers or their citizens. Russia is looking
:04:03. > :04:07.for a pretext. So far, like in Georgia in 2008, they managed to
:04:08. > :04:14.provoke Georgians into doing something irresponsible. The
:04:15. > :04:22.Ukrainians will not give Putin the satisfaction. He went the other
:04:23. > :04:32.way, he resorted to trying to legitimise the secession of Crimea.
:04:33. > :04:41.Everybody, the United States, the European Union, Ukraine, they will
:04:42. > :04:49.consider the referendum in Crimea as illegitimate. There is a sizeable
:04:50. > :04:58.Crimean population that does not want to go back to Russia. There are
:04:59. > :05:06.a too well what it was like. How it is being seen in the letter states?
:05:07. > :05:09.There is consensus among Western leaders, this is unacceptable,
:05:10. > :05:14.intolerable but there is nothing that can be done. It is all about
:05:15. > :05:20.rhetoric, both from the US and Canada. We are seeing the Republican
:05:21. > :05:30.right in the US condemning Obama's limp wristed approach. The rhetoric
:05:31. > :05:35.is all fine but the reality is that no one will invade, there is no
:05:36. > :05:42.appetite for it, there is no potential for world War three, no
:05:43. > :05:46.one will confront this. It is rhetorically an important issue.
:05:47. > :05:51.Canada has the third largest population of Ukrainians outside of
:05:52. > :05:59.Ukraine and Russia. It is a huge issue there. The ambassador to
:06:00. > :06:03.Russia has withdrawn from the G8. There is an election coming up so
:06:04. > :06:05.all political parties there are positioning themselves but again
:06:06. > :06:13.there is not anything that can be done beyond some token sanctions and
:06:14. > :06:17.limiting the visas of certain powerful people. There are so many
:06:18. > :06:22.factors at play in this globalised world. Here in Europe, the gas from
:06:23. > :06:28.Russia is so critical to the economy, you cannot simply say, we
:06:29. > :06:33.will cut you off. Is part of the problem that Putin gets that
:06:34. > :06:39.argument, he thinks that Obama was macro foreign policy is feckless as
:06:40. > :06:44.well. It could end up being quite dangerous. We saw this in Syria.
:06:45. > :06:47.Putin gets this. From the perspective of most people in the
:06:48. > :06:52.West, Putin is on the wrong side of history. But he does have time and
:06:53. > :07:03.he does have power and while he is in -- he is imposing his vision of
:07:04. > :07:06.Russia counter to the European Union, it seems to us a failed
:07:07. > :07:10.exercise of his own arsenal than it is, you can get away with it for
:07:11. > :07:17.some time and, as in Syria, there is not the appetite, especially after
:07:18. > :07:26.Iraq and Afghanistan to create a conflagration. Europe is not going
:07:27. > :07:31.to do anything and neither is Obama. Semantics have been extremely
:07:32. > :07:36.important. The Cold War, a fascist coup, we are playing against the
:07:37. > :07:49.second World War or even the siege of Sevastopol. I am seeing Leo
:07:50. > :07:52.Tolstoy's Sevastopol sketches. Perhaps you could go back to
:07:53. > :07:57.Napoleon who could never make sense of, let alone invade Russia, which
:07:58. > :08:08.is well known. This is where semantics are important. Putin has
:08:09. > :08:17.created a world of his own. They know the mindset of the Soviet Union
:08:18. > :08:25.and the KGB mentality. They cannot do anything. Looking at Putin
:08:26. > :08:29.talking about a fascist coup, because if you look at the facts,
:08:30. > :08:36.this is not a coup and they are not fascists. The historian Tom
:08:37. > :08:42.Schneider told that propaganda not being a flawed description but the
:08:43. > :08:50.script of the action. It means to justify. It is a self fulfilling
:08:51. > :08:53.prophecy. The facts are that the further away from Russia people are
:08:54. > :09:00.the easier it is for John McCain to talk tough. If it happened to be
:09:01. > :09:02.Germany, it is not just... It is 100 years of thinking about Russian and
:09:03. > :09:07.the Russian menace, as they would see it, and how do you deal with
:09:08. > :09:17.that now that, if they turn the gas off, what do you do? Shale gas and
:09:18. > :09:21.fracking, perhaps was up 30 years ago, you had in the White House some
:09:22. > :09:27.experts in how to understand the Soviet Union also Russia and they
:09:28. > :09:35.disappeared. Grants academics have disappeared. I think they should
:09:36. > :09:42.bring back... Russian studies? Yes, for everyone! The talk of the Cold
:09:43. > :09:46.War is out of place. We have moved into a new situation altogether.
:09:47. > :09:50.When Angela Merkel says that Putin is not living in the real world, I
:09:51. > :09:57.was interested in a comment by one of shooting's close advisers, who is
:09:58. > :10:08.now a fierce critic of him. He said it is not Putin who is not living in
:10:09. > :10:15.the real world, it is the rest of the world. The last thing Russia
:10:16. > :10:20.wants is a totally unstable or even occupied country. It would be a
:10:21. > :10:25.nightmare for the Russians. There are common interests here that we
:10:26. > :10:29.need to explore. I am not trying to condone what Putin is doing but what
:10:30. > :10:38.I think the West needs to do is to think seriously how and why Putin
:10:39. > :10:41.has acted in the way he has done and to begin to build on common
:10:42. > :10:46.interests. There are common interests. In the end, what will
:10:47. > :10:53.have to happen in Ukraine, if it stays as one country, they will need
:10:54. > :10:56.to be some sort of Federation. That would not be a good Russia's
:10:57. > :11:02.interests. These are the areas we need to exploit. Get away from this
:11:03. > :11:09.Cold War mentality. As we know, one of Putin's... One of the things that
:11:10. > :11:13.motivates his psychology is a fear of chaos. He feels he has imposed
:11:14. > :11:22.order and that is the most important thing. You cannot have a chaotic
:11:23. > :11:26.Ukraine on his border. I like Adam, I do not like his opinions. Russia
:11:27. > :11:35.has a legitimate interest in Ukraine, new say. It did have an
:11:36. > :11:49.interest by renting Sevastopol as its sea bass. -- it's naval base.
:11:50. > :11:58.They can do stabilise the whole peninsula. Ukraine was busy
:11:59. > :12:05.Unitarian sovereign state. Ukraine will never agree to a federal relies
:12:06. > :12:15.on age and because it will be -- the federalisation. They will ever agree
:12:16. > :12:20.to Crimea seceding from Ukraine. The fact is they have little control
:12:21. > :12:24.over the situation and they have to accommodate their opponents in the
:12:25. > :12:32.Kremlin somehow but federalisation will not be the way. Some analysts
:12:33. > :12:43.say that Crimea is only the foot stone, stepping stone, for Russia to
:12:44. > :12:49.grab more. Eastern Ukraine, they were formerly of neo-Nazi
:12:50. > :12:54.provenance, who were the stabilising, trying to destabilise
:12:55. > :13:00.eastern Ukraine. Local Russian speakers do not want a Russian
:13:01. > :13:06.presence. There are all sorts of Internet campaigns, asking Putin to
:13:07. > :13:14.get out of Ukraine. One last word. In Adam's defence. Their
:13:15. > :13:24.geopolitical issues that X plane this. We are seeing the aftermath of
:13:25. > :13:28.25 years of Cold War. There is a very bruised sense of self image in
:13:29. > :13:33.Russia and this desire, this panic that Ukraine, the last of the major
:13:34. > :13:38.satellites, is going to move towards Europe, that provoked this kind of
:13:39. > :13:45.action. Now the question is how much does the West need Ukraine? The sad
:13:46. > :13:51.reality is that for Ukraine, the West is strategically not that --
:13:52. > :13:55.the West sees it as not strategically that important. Nobody
:13:56. > :14:01.wants the West to go to fight over Ukraine with Russia. Ukraine is not
:14:02. > :14:05.going anywhere, it is not going to us, it is not going to Europe or to
:14:06. > :14:10.the states. Ukraine was to be the bridge between Russia and the West.
:14:11. > :14:12.Ukraine wants the right to self-determination and sorting its
:14:13. > :14:16.problems on its own. Without Russian involvement.
:14:17. > :14:19.About the only good thing that can be said about the events following
:14:20. > :14:22.the murder of the black teenager Stephen Lawrence in London 21 years
:14:23. > :14:25.ago is that British people care very deeply about getting to the truth of
:14:26. > :14:27.this horrible race crime. This week, we learned of alleged police
:14:28. > :14:31.corruption, documents being shredded, effectively a cover up and
:14:32. > :14:35.the use of undercover police to spy on the Lawrence family. Can we trust
:14:36. > :14:42.the police? And how does the image of the British bobby compare with
:14:43. > :14:48.other countries? Were you shocked by all of this? It
:14:49. > :14:51.was extraordinary stuff. I was. I never put a great deal of the
:14:52. > :14:57.police, in the sense that successive British governments have been too
:14:58. > :15:02.scared to tackle police reform. It is the one major British institution
:15:03. > :15:05.that has remained untouched and it is the failure of successive
:15:06. > :15:09.governments to do this because they are afraid of the police. They are a
:15:10. > :15:13.formidable force. Inevitably, there are within the police, like in any
:15:14. > :15:18.situation, some very corrupt people. They have totally,
:15:19. > :15:27.particularly the Metropolitan Police, have been an -- incapable of
:15:28. > :15:37.weeding out these people. It is a shock that it has not surprise me,
:15:38. > :15:50.but they will fit you up if they are threatened. As they did with Andrew
:15:51. > :15:57.Mitchell, they fit you up. So I think it is a shocking story. The
:15:58. > :16:00.interesting thing now is, will this government or any future government
:16:01. > :16:04.actually reform the police? It goes wider than corruption. The police
:16:05. > :16:12.are very inefficient. It is not a good service. The number of
:16:13. > :16:14.criminals they catch for the number of offences perpetrated are tiny
:16:15. > :16:22.percentage. A senior police officer once said to me, the trouble with
:16:23. > :16:26.detectives is that they do not take enough -- detect enough. It is
:16:27. > :16:29.something that honest release officers get. It is sad, because the
:16:30. > :16:34.whole force has been tarnished with this area of corruption, when it is
:16:35. > :16:37.a tiny minority of officers involved. But in the Stephen
:16:38. > :16:43.Lawrence case, of course, it was not just about corruption. It was also
:16:44. > :16:51.initially about racism. That has tinged the whole enquiry. The new
:16:52. > :16:56.aspect of this is that there was a corrupt detective that shredded
:16:57. > :17:04.evidence and prevented his superiors getting anywhere with it. But it
:17:05. > :17:08.goes much higher up. The present commission has only just arrived in
:17:09. > :17:12.post about a year ago. So he is not responsible, but some of his
:17:13. > :17:17.predecessors dare large measure of responsibility. I think for many
:17:18. > :17:21.people, what was really shocking was the use of an undercover police
:17:22. > :17:27.officer to spy on the victims of a race crime. That is extraordinary.
:17:28. > :17:32.It is. On the one hand, the view from abroad is that the British
:17:33. > :17:38.Bobby is a wonderful person. Always civilised, polite and not corrupted,
:17:39. > :17:43.like the BBC, a beacon of civilisation. And unfortunately in
:17:44. > :17:50.the last few years, that great reputation has been dented.
:17:51. > :17:55.Listening to you, I have the feeling that the British police are no
:17:56. > :18:00.better than the French police. It is like a state within the state. They
:18:01. > :18:04.do whatever they please. Is police reform difficult in France? They
:18:05. > :18:07.have such a great lobby. People on the left are desperate not to be
:18:08. > :18:18.seen as soft on the law, and people on the right want to be tough on the
:18:19. > :18:23.law. Absolutely. The police have always operated in the background,
:18:24. > :18:32.and we almost accept that that should be the case. Here, we have
:18:33. > :18:35.very high expectations. You do, and what I find interesting is the
:18:36. > :18:41.exercise of public enquiries in Britain. OK, if there is a case of
:18:42. > :18:50.corruption, something is really wrong and we have a national public
:18:51. > :18:57.enquiry, it takes years. We are good at that, the British. You are good
:18:58. > :19:00.at that. It is a cathartic exercise. In the end, it does not change
:19:01. > :19:07.anything. We have the Hudson enquiry, the Leveson Inquiry, and it
:19:08. > :19:14.doesn't change anything. Now we are going to have a second public
:19:15. > :19:16.enquiry on a first public enquiry. Listening to that, the reputational
:19:17. > :19:22.damage to the British police might have been internally quite large. If
:19:23. > :19:28.you look from outside, the British Bobby is still the model of good,
:19:29. > :19:32.civilised behaviour, particularly if you are a tourist and you are lost
:19:33. > :19:41.in central London. They are wonderful. They are so cuddly! But
:19:42. > :19:43.this enquiry, shameful as it is, I see it from the perspective of
:19:44. > :19:49.somebody who had to report a lot of police mentality in Ukraine. --
:19:50. > :19:55.police brutality. The police actually beat up victims of crime.
:19:56. > :20:03.The head of the police Interior Ministry has in the last few years
:20:04. > :20:10.been a political appointment. So there is normal -- no law on
:20:11. > :20:14.policing as such. It will need a big reform. It still remains political,
:20:15. > :20:21.and this trust of the police is the largest in Europe, in Ukraine. As a
:20:22. > :20:25.student, I went to a police officer to ask him for directions somewhere,
:20:26. > :20:30.and I cannot say on television what his response was! Let's say I had to
:20:31. > :20:35.make my own way. While I would in no way justify what is coming out about
:20:36. > :20:39.Metropolitan Police here, it is important to put it in context. Even
:20:40. > :20:45.in other western democracies, we see these scandals. The Sheriff of Los
:20:46. > :20:50.Angeles resigned recently from a scandal. We have a lease corruption
:20:51. > :20:55.in Philadelphia. There are two ways to see this. One is the horror of
:20:56. > :21:02.the abuse and violation of the Lawrence family's privacy and the
:21:03. > :21:07.systemic racism. But the other is that we are entering an era of it,
:21:08. > :21:14.partly due to mobile phone videos and cameras around our world. It
:21:15. > :21:22.means the police can't make up what they used to make up. It is good
:21:23. > :21:25.news in a twisted way. But of course, if we have another enquiry
:21:26. > :21:30.that takes five years and we have new leaders in Downing Street,
:21:31. > :21:36.inevitably, the concern is that nothing will change. But clearly,
:21:37. > :21:40.these things are now out in the open and they can't be pushed under the
:21:41. > :21:42.carpet the way they were. Finally, medical experts including
:21:43. > :21:47.the World Health Organisation have declared a war on our sugar
:21:48. > :21:51.consumption. And say it is the new tobacco and should be taxed to help
:21:52. > :21:55.event obesity. Is it time to break the sugar habit? Surely that would
:21:56. > :21:59.be the entrance -- the end of French cuisine. It would be the end of the
:22:00. > :22:03.French patisserie. I grew up in France in the 80s and I remember a
:22:04. > :22:10.national campaign to say sugar is good for you. The sugar lobby was
:22:11. > :22:20.hiring great writers, just to promote sugar. Like Sean Paul
:22:21. > :22:25.Sartre? No, he was dead by then. I will not give the names. They
:22:26. > :22:31.promoted sugar? Yes, as a fantastic thing. It was at the same time that
:22:32. > :22:37.we had the new low-fat products. As a child, I went to America for the
:22:38. > :22:43.first time and saw all this low-fat, and I could not understand. In
:22:44. > :22:48.France, we just had full fat. Sugar is bad for you, but low-fat is bad
:22:49. > :22:51.for you as well. Low-fat foods are often pumped full of sugar to
:22:52. > :22:58.increase the flavour. So choose your poison. It is to do with processed
:22:59. > :23:02.foods. We all eat them every day in huge quantities, and the
:23:03. > :23:08.manufacturers make large sums of money from it. Clearly, they want to
:23:09. > :23:12.make products as attractive and tasteful as possible, and one of the
:23:13. > :23:15.way to do that is to add sugar and salt. It is the nature of the beast.
:23:16. > :23:18.As soon as you start eating processed food and the manufacturer
:23:19. > :23:25.hopes to sell anything in quantities, you will be eating large
:23:26. > :23:29.amounts of stuff which would be -- probably are not good for you. The
:23:30. > :23:32.real arguments should be between processed food and fresh fruit. The
:23:33. > :23:35.problem with fresh food is that it is more expensive, so poor people
:23:36. > :23:41.will always need more processed food. It is also quicker, so people
:23:42. > :23:46.can get away from cooking, unlike the French, who still hopefully
:23:47. > :23:52.Cook. You have only got to go to North America and see the most
:23:53. > :23:57.grotesque, obese people that you are beginning to see in Britain. North
:23:58. > :24:00.America is a real wake-up call. The other philosophical question is,
:24:01. > :24:05.what is the government's role here? Should they take the Libertarian
:24:06. > :24:10.argument, eat what you like? Or should they say, we are going to tax
:24:11. > :24:13.it to make it more attractive? In a country like the UK, where you have
:24:14. > :24:18.the National Health Service, this is everyone's concern, because obesity
:24:19. > :24:22.leads to diabetes and other health problems. So it is fair to say this
:24:23. > :24:29.is not simply a private matter. In New York, we saw mayor Bloomberg tax
:24:30. > :24:37.soda pop and run into huge opposition. That is not going to
:24:38. > :24:43.spread across the US. It is becoming very confusing to know what to eat.
:24:44. > :24:47.That is the point. If you look at the horse meat scandal here last
:24:48. > :24:54.year, that food came from Romania through a French company via
:24:55. > :24:58.Luxembourg to the UK. Fresh meat 's should be healthy, and yet people
:24:59. > :25:01.were scared off by that. Perhaps we should all beat Brockley, but of
:25:02. > :25:06.course, the pesticides could get us. -- broccoli. People are becoming
:25:07. > :25:12.baffled to know what is healthy and good for us. Any attempts to
:25:13. > :25:16.regulate what people eat are doomed to fail. Tobacco kills you, but
:25:17. > :25:22.people smoke. Sugar kills you, but people were always each chocolate.
:25:23. > :25:26.People still drink. If you are going to do it, you might as well have
:25:27. > :25:35.full fat and full sugar, but in moderation. A tax probably would
:25:36. > :25:39.work. All processed foods would reduce their sugar and fat
:25:40. > :25:43.immediately. At is it the Dateline London this week. You can comment on
:25:44. > :25:44.the programme on Twitter. We are back next week at the same time.
:25:45. > :25:49.Goodbye.