08/03/2014 Dateline London

Hello and welcome to Dateline London. Russia, Crimea and Ukraine -

could this be the beginning of a new Cold War?

After the shocking revelations about London's Metropolitan Police, can

you trust the guardians of law and order?

And is sugar the new tobacco? My guests today are Agnes Poirier of

Marianne, Jeffrey Kofman - a writer and broadcaster - and Adam Raphael

of Transport Magazine. Vladimir Putin says he does not want

a new Cold War although gobbling up part of a neighbouring country by

effectively annexing Crimea may eventually lead down that route. Can

the Ukraine crisis be resolved peacefully, even if Crimea votes in

a referendum to split from Ukraine and join Russia?

Everybody says they want to resolve this peacefully. Is that what will

happen? I think it is the only way it will happen because militarily,

Ukraine stands little chance of defending itself against Russian

aggression. What Ukraine does and has been doing successfully is

resisting the provocations and not rising to military provocations, not

shooting at the Russian soldiers or pro-Russian Cossacks who are

blocking Ukrainian soldiers into their bases. Ukraine was guaranteed

sovereignty of its territory. There are protests of Soviet flags. Do

they want to go back to the USSR? Unlikely. Putin has this pet project

about a greater Russian world and reinstating the glory of the first

Imperial Russia, then Soviet Russia but Ukraine no longer wants to be

part of that world and this is something that has been sort of put

into words by Ukrainian protesters time and again. Putin, if you love

Ukraine, let it go. He seems reluctant to do so. On the specific

issue of Crimea and this boat, is this generally seen in Ukraine as

completely illegitimate? It is supposed to be unconstitutional. If

they like another people in a country due to secede, they should

be allowed to do so. It should be seen as suspicious that they would

want to secede now, after a failed attempt. The crisis was resolved

back then but it might be resolved now if only given a chance, if only

Russia were willing to negotiate with the new authorities in Kiev. He

calls the events in Ukraine a coup d'etat. He will not talk to them.

How will you not talk to -- how we resolve it if you will not talk to

them? The feeling in Ukraine is that Russia is looking for a pretext, in

other words is hoping that there will be some shooting and they will

say they have to save their soldiers or their citizens. Russia is looking

for a pretext. So far, like in Georgia in 2008, they managed to

provoke Georgians into doing something irresponsible. The

Ukrainians will not give Putin the satisfaction. He went the other

way, he resorted to trying to legitimise the secession of Crimea.

Everybody, the United States, the European Union, Ukraine, they will

consider the referendum in Crimea as illegitimate. There is a sizeable

Crimean population that does not want to go back to Russia. There are

a too well what it was like. How it is being seen in the letter states?

There is consensus among Western leaders, this is unacceptable,

intolerable but there is nothing that can be done. It is all about

rhetoric, both from the US and Canada. We are seeing the Republican

right in the US condemning Obama's limp wristed approach. The rhetoric

is all fine but the reality is that no one will invade, there is no

appetite for it, there is no potential for world War three, no

one will confront this. It is rhetorically an important issue.

Canada has the third largest population of Ukrainians outside of

Ukraine and Russia. It is a huge issue there. The ambassador to

Russia has withdrawn from the G8. There is an election coming up so

all political parties there are positioning themselves but again

there is not anything that can be done beyond some token sanctions and

limiting the visas of certain powerful people. There are so many

factors at play in this globalised world. Here in Europe, the gas from

Russia is so critical to the economy, you cannot simply say, we

will cut you off. Is part of the problem that Putin gets that

argument, he thinks that Obama was macro foreign policy is feckless as

well. It could end up being quite dangerous. We saw this in Syria.

Putin gets this. From the perspective of most people in the

West, Putin is on the wrong side of history. But he does have time and

he does have power and while he is in -- he is imposing his vision of

Russia counter to the European Union, it seems to us a failed

exercise of his own arsenal than it is, you can get away with it for

some time and, as in Syria, there is not the appetite, especially after

Iraq and Afghanistan to create a conflagration. Europe is not going

to do anything and neither is Obama. Semantics have been extremely

important. The Cold War, a fascist coup, we are playing against the

second World War or even the siege of Sevastopol. I am seeing Leo

Tolstoy's Sevastopol sketches. Perhaps you could go back to

Napoleon who could never make sense of, let alone invade Russia, which

is well known. This is where semantics are important. Putin has

created a world of his own. They know the mindset of the Soviet Union

and the KGB mentality. They cannot do anything. Looking at Putin

talking about a fascist coup, because if you look at the facts,

this is not a coup and they are not fascists. The historian Tom

Schneider told that propaganda not being a flawed description but the

script of the action. It means to justify. It is a self fulfilling

prophecy. The facts are that the further away from Russia people are

the easier it is for John McCain to talk tough. If it happened to be

Germany, it is not just... It is 100 years of thinking about Russian and

the Russian menace, as they would see it, and how do you deal with

that now that, if they turn the gas off, what do you do? Shale gas and

fracking, perhaps was up 30 years ago, you had in the White House some

experts in how to understand the Soviet Union also Russia and they

disappeared. Grants academics have disappeared. I think they should

bring back... Russian studies? Yes, for everyone! The talk of the Cold

War is out of place. We have moved into a new situation altogether.

When Angela Merkel says that Putin is not living in the real world, I

was interested in a comment by one of shooting's close advisers, who is

now a fierce critic of him. He said it is not Putin who is not living in

the real world, it is the rest of the world. The last thing Russia

wants is a totally unstable or even occupied country. It would be a

nightmare for the Russians. There are common interests here that we

need to explore. I am not trying to condone what Putin is doing but what

I think the West needs to do is to think seriously how and why Putin

has acted in the way he has done and to begin to build on common

interests. There are common interests. In the end, what will

have to happen in Ukraine, if it stays as one country, they will need

to be some sort of Federation. That would not be a good Russia's

interests. These are the areas we need to exploit. Get away from this

Cold War mentality. As we know, one of Putin's... One of the things that

motivates his psychology is a fear of chaos. He feels he has imposed

order and that is the most important thing. You cannot have a chaotic

Ukraine on his border. I like Adam, I do not like his opinions. Russia

has a legitimate interest in Ukraine, new say. It did have an

interest by renting Sevastopol as its sea bass. -- it's naval base.

They can do stabilise the whole peninsula. Ukraine was busy

Unitarian sovereign state. Ukraine will never agree to a federal relies

on age and because it will be -- the federalisation. They will ever agree

to Crimea seceding from Ukraine. The fact is they have little control

over the situation and they have to accommodate their opponents in the

Kremlin somehow but federalisation will not be the way. Some analysts

say that Crimea is only the foot stone, stepping stone, for Russia to

grab more. Eastern Ukraine, they were formerly of neo-Nazi

provenance, who were the stabilising, trying to destabilise

eastern Ukraine. Local Russian speakers do not want a Russian

presence. There are all sorts of Internet campaigns, asking Putin to

get out of Ukraine. One last word. In Adam's defence. Their

geopolitical issues that X plane this. We are seeing the aftermath of

25 years of Cold War. There is a very bruised sense of self image in

Russia and this desire, this panic that Ukraine, the last of the major

satellites, is going to move towards Europe, that provoked this kind of

action. Now the question is how much does the West need Ukraine? The sad

reality is that for Ukraine, the West is strategically not that --

the West sees it as not strategically that important. Nobody

wants the West to go to fight over Ukraine with Russia. Ukraine is not

going anywhere, it is not going to us, it is not going to Europe or to

the states. Ukraine was to be the bridge between Russia and the West.

Ukraine wants the right to self-determination and sorting its

problems on its own. Without Russian involvement.

About the only good thing that can be said about the events following

the murder of the black teenager Stephen Lawrence in London 21 years

ago is that British people care very deeply about getting to the truth of

this horrible race crime. This week, we learned of alleged police

corruption, documents being shredded, effectively a cover up and

the use of undercover police to spy on the Lawrence family. Can we trust

the police? And how does the image of the British bobby compare with

other countries? Were you shocked by all of this? It

was extraordinary stuff. I was. I never put a great deal of the

police, in the sense that successive British governments have been too

scared to tackle police reform. It is the one major British institution

that has remained untouched and it is the failure of successive

governments to do this because they are afraid of the police. They are a

formidable force. Inevitably, there are within the police, like in any

situation, some very corrupt people. They have totally,

particularly the Metropolitan Police, have been an -- incapable of

weeding out these people. It is a shock that it has not surprise me,

but they will fit you up if they are threatened. As they did with Andrew

Mitchell, they fit you up. So I think it is a shocking story. The

interesting thing now is, will this government or any future government

actually reform the police? It goes wider than corruption. The police

are very inefficient. It is not a good service. The number of

criminals they catch for the number of offences perpetrated are tiny

percentage. A senior police officer once said to me, the trouble with

detectives is that they do not take enough -- detect enough. It is

something that honest release officers get. It is sad, because the

whole force has been tarnished with this area of corruption, when it is

a tiny minority of officers involved. But in the Stephen

Lawrence case, of course, it was not just about corruption. It was also

initially about racism. That has tinged the whole enquiry. The new

aspect of this is that there was a corrupt detective that shredded

evidence and prevented his superiors getting anywhere with it. But it

goes much higher up. The present commission has only just arrived in

post about a year ago. So he is not responsible, but some of his

predecessors dare large measure of responsibility. I think for many

people, what was really shocking was the use of an undercover police

officer to spy on the victims of a race crime. That is extraordinary.

It is. On the one hand, the view from abroad is that the British

Bobby is a wonderful person. Always civilised, polite and not corrupted,

like the BBC, a beacon of civilisation. And unfortunately in

the last few years, that great reputation has been dented.

Listening to you, I have the feeling that the British police are no

better than the French police. It is like a state within the state. They

do whatever they please. Is police reform difficult in France? They

have such a great lobby. People on the left are desperate not to be

seen as soft on the law, and people on the right want to be tough on the

law. Absolutely. The police have always operated in the background,

and we almost accept that that should be the case. Here, we have

very high expectations. You do, and what I find interesting is the

exercise of public enquiries in Britain. OK, if there is a case of

corruption, something is really wrong and we have a national public

enquiry, it takes years. We are good at that, the British. You are good

at that. It is a cathartic exercise. In the end, it does not change

anything. We have the Hudson enquiry, the Leveson Inquiry, and it

doesn't change anything. Now we are going to have a second public

enquiry on a first public enquiry. Listening to that, the reputational

damage to the British police might have been internally quite large. If

you look from outside, the British Bobby is still the model of good,

civilised behaviour, particularly if you are a tourist and you are lost

in central London. They are wonderful. They are so cuddly! But

this enquiry, shameful as it is, I see it from the perspective of

somebody who had to report a lot of police mentality in Ukraine. --

police brutality. The police actually beat up victims of crime.

The head of the police Interior Ministry has in the last few years

been a political appointment. So there is normal -- no law on

policing as such. It will need a big reform. It still remains political,

and this trust of the police is the largest in Europe, in Ukraine. As a

student, I went to a police officer to ask him for directions somewhere,

and I cannot say on television what his response was! Let's say I had to

make my own way. While I would in no way justify what is coming out about

Metropolitan Police here, it is important to put it in context. Even

in other western democracies, we see these scandals. The Sheriff of Los

Angeles resigned recently from a scandal. We have a lease corruption

in Philadelphia. There are two ways to see this. One is the horror of

the abuse and violation of the Lawrence family's privacy and the

systemic racism. But the other is that we are entering an era of it,

partly due to mobile phone videos and cameras around our world. It

means the police can't make up what they used to make up. It is good

news in a twisted way. But of course, if we have another enquiry

that takes five years and we have new leaders in Downing Street,

inevitably, the concern is that nothing will change. But clearly,

these things are now out in the open and they can't be pushed under the

carpet the way they were. Finally, medical experts including

the World Health Organisation have declared a war on our sugar

consumption. And say it is the new tobacco and should be taxed to help

event obesity. Is it time to break the sugar habit? Surely that would

be the entrance -- the end of French cuisine. It would be the end of the

French patisserie. I grew up in France in the 80s and I remember a

national campaign to say sugar is good for you. The sugar lobby was

hiring great writers, just to promote sugar. Like Sean Paul

Sartre? No, he was dead by then. I will not give the names. They

promoted sugar? Yes, as a fantastic thing. It was at the same time that

we had the new low-fat products. As a child, I went to America for the

first time and saw all this low-fat, and I could not understand. In

France, we just had full fat. Sugar is bad for you, but low-fat is bad

for you as well. Low-fat foods are often pumped full of sugar to

increase the flavour. So choose your poison. It is to do with processed

foods. We all eat them every day in huge quantities, and the

manufacturers make large sums of money from it. Clearly, they want to

make products as attractive and tasteful as possible, and one of the

way to do that is to add sugar and salt. It is the nature of the beast.

As soon as you start eating processed food and the manufacturer

hopes to sell anything in quantities, you will be eating large

amounts of stuff which would be -- probably are not good for you. The

real arguments should be between processed food and fresh fruit. The

problem with fresh food is that it is more expensive, so poor people

will always need more processed food. It is also quicker, so people

can get away from cooking, unlike the French, who still hopefully

Cook. You have only got to go to North America and see the most

grotesque, obese people that you are beginning to see in Britain. North

America is a real wake-up call. The other philosophical question is,

what is the government's role here? Should they take the Libertarian

argument, eat what you like? Or should they say, we are going to tax

it to make it more attractive? In a country like the UK, where you have

the National Health Service, this is everyone's concern, because obesity

leads to diabetes and other health problems. So it is fair to say this

is not simply a private matter. In New York, we saw mayor Bloomberg tax

soda pop and run into huge opposition. That is not going to

spread across the US. It is becoming very confusing to know what to eat.

That is the point. If you look at the horse meat scandal here last

year, that food came from Romania through a French company via

Luxembourg to the UK. Fresh meat 's should be healthy, and yet people

were scared off by that. Perhaps we should all beat Brockley, but of

course, the pesticides could get us. -- broccoli. People are becoming

baffled to know what is healthy and good for us. Any attempts to

regulate what people eat are doomed to fail. Tobacco kills you, but

people smoke. Sugar kills you, but people were always each chocolate.

People still drink. If you are going to do it, you might as well have

full fat and full sugar, but in moderation. A tax probably would

work. All processed foods would reduce their sugar and fat

immediately. At is it the Dateline London this week. You can comment on

the programme on Twitter. We are back next week at the same time.

Goodbye.