That weekend break in Dnipropetrovsk is off. I have been banned from entering Ukraine. I learned of this edict via the Mail on Sunday, naturally. I was unlikely to be appraised any other way, since I have never sought to go to Ukraine in my life. Doubtless frustrated at being unable to turn down a visa application they were never going to receive, the Kiev authorities simply issued a ban anyway – just in case, as it were.
Being prohibited from setting foot in Ukraine will not trouble me particularly. Unlike, for example, Donald Trump’s disgraced campaign manager Paul Manafort, I do not need the assistance of an unwitting Ukrainian hairdresser to conduct my tax affairs. Nor was I planning a political visit to a country where the parliamentary speaker is a Hitler admirer and pogromists and Nazi collaborators are national heroes – a place where as much as a favourable mention of the Red Army’s wartime record risks prosecution.
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