Good evening, gentle reader, or perhaps I should say 'good evening' to the good citizens of Sevastopol, who tonight are enjoying a rather more intimate acquaintance with their own candles than they might have wished. Yes, the Ukrainians have done it again. With the precision of a brain surgeon and the subtlety of a brick through a conservatory window, they have struck the power grid of occupied Crimea, plunging the largest city into a darkness so profound that even the street cats are using torches.
Our stoic friends in Whitehall, naturally, have responded with the kind of stiff upper lip that could serve as a jib on a racing yacht. 'British support remains unwavering,' they intone, as they polish the howitzers and check the GPS coordinates on their teacups. One pictures the Defence Secretary, perhaps pausing mid-bite into a Hobnob, to murmur, 'Jolly good show, chaps,' before returning to the crossword.
But let us not mince words, for mincing is for vegetarians and we are in the business of meaty reportage. This is a glorious, chaotic, brilliantly irresponsible act of warfare. It is the sort of thing that would make Sun Tzu choke on his fortune cookie. The Russians, who have spent months convincing themselves that their occupation is a civilised tea party, now find themselves playing hide and seek in the dark. One imagines the local FSB colonel, fumbling for a torch, cursing the day he ever swapped the Lubyanka for the sunny beaches of Crimea.
Meanwhile, the Kremlin's response has been predictably apoplectic. Mr Putin, I suspect, has bitten through his third fountain pen this week. The official line, as always, is a masterpiece of alternative mathematics: 'This is a terrorist act orchestrated by NATO.' Of course, it is. It always is. If a pigeon in Red Square so much as twitches, it is NATO's fault. The rest of us, meanwhile, check our watches and wonder if the next strike will be accompanied by a soundtrack of 'The Final Countdown'.
And so, dear reader, we enter another glorious chapter in the annals of modern warfare. The power grid is down, the generators are humming, and somewhere in a bunker in Kyiv, a technician is probably opening a bottle of horilka. The British promise to send more weapons, more training, and perhaps a few spare fuses for good measure. It is all perfectly mad, perfectly brilliant, and perfectly in keeping with the spirit of our times.
What next, you ask? Will they cut the water? Turn off the gas? Perhaps they'll hack into the Russian state television and broadcast a continuous loop of 'Mr Blobby' until the troops surrender. In this war, anything is possible. The only certainty is that the British will remain, as ever, 'unwavering'. Which, I suspect, just means they have not yet finished their pudding.
