It was a blur of grey dawn, jetlag, and disbelief. After finally getting permission on the evening of Thursday 13 September 2001 to cross the Atlantic, the plane that my employer had chartered for a group of its journalists had landed.
United States airspace was still closed. We had flown to Montreal. We continued by road. By late morning on Friday we were in Manhattan. I was able to approach the area where, until 72 hours earlier, the World Trade Center had stood. I broadcast live, describing what I could see and sense: smoke, sorrow, shock, and anger.
During those days I reported from New York, smoke still rose from the ruins. The following month I was in Moscow, to report on Russia’s reaction. Today, a quarter of a century later, the legacy of 9/11 has had huge consequences for relations between Moscow and the West.
It is a subject I have researched extensively in recent years.
After 9/11, Vladimir Putin was the first foreign leader to call President George W Bush. He offered his support. In a televised address, he gave this public pledge, too: “In the name of Russia, I want to say to the American people – we are with you.”
His words were well chosen. They anticipated the challenge to the world Bush would soon make. “Every nation, in every region, now has a decision to make. Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists.”
Yet, as the ruins of the World Trade Center still smouldered, some around Bush were preparing to light another fire. Chief among them were vice-president Dick Cheney, secretary for defence Donald Rumsfeld, and the under secretary for defence Paul Wolfowitz. Despite the lack of any reliable evidence that Saddam Hussein, the dictator then leading Iraq, was involved in the 9/11 attacks, they determined that he must go.
First, though, came a war in Afghanistan to depose the Taliban who had hosted the 9/11 hijackers. Here too Russia was helpful, raising no objection to the establishment of US bases in the region.
The US and its allies attacked targets in Afghanistan in the first week of October. I was in Moscow then. I remember an atmosphere of understanding and acceptance – together with some apprehension. It was not so long since the inglorious end of the Soviet military campaign in Afghanistan.
But the response to the invasion of Iraq was different. Claims that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction (WMD) that might be used against Western targets would prove baseless. Yet, they were used as a justification for invasion.
Russia had extensive economic interests in Iraq, dating back to the time Saddam was a Soviet ally. Sir David Manning, foreign policy adviser to Tony Blair and later ambassador to Washington during the Iraq war, told me in a 2023 interview that Putin “was resentful that Russian interests were apparently being disregarded – and this despite Moscow having co-operated closely after 9/11 with the US over Afghanistan”.
There was something even more serious. Fiona Hill served as a Russia expert in different roles under president George W Bush, president Barack Obama, and, in his first term, President Donald Trump. When we met in Washington in the summer of 2024, she drew my attention to a little-remembered incident in Moscow in the run-up to the invasion: a conversation between Alexander Manzhosin, a Putin aide, and visitors from a Washington think-tank.
Talking of Saddam and WMD, Manzhosin asked the Americans: “Do you not see he is bluffing? Our intelligence professionals know this. Don’t yours?”
So when the invasion went ahead, the Kremlin was convinced that Washington was acting on false pretences: using the spectre of WMD to justify regime change.
Tony Blair’s chief of staff Jonathan Powell was at the heart of decision-making in the run-up to the Iraq war. He is now UK National Security Adviser. When I interviewed him in 2023, he told me Iraq “was really what broke it for us with Putin”.
How unprecedented El Nino could persist through February
Strawberry fields for ever as gene-edited fruit to hit UK shelves
How unprecedented El Niño could persist through to February
The head of the United Nations has warned that the world is facing a “supersized” El Niño event that has a “near 100 per cent likelihood” of lasting until February next year.
Antonio Guterres was speaking as UN experts warned the world has entered a “danger zone of extreme weather” in the coming months.
What you need to know
- Data released by the World Meteorological Organisation shows this year’s El Niño is set to be the strongest in more than 70 years, with “big impacts on rainfall and temperature patterns”.
- The natural climate phenomenon is already established in the Pacific and is caused when sea temperatures rise.
- The effects of El Niño vary by region. Hot, dry weather may hit South America, south east Asia and Australia. In India, monsoon rainfall can decrease but the southern US faces a higher chance of flooding.
How will El Niño affect the UK and the rest of the world?
Guterres warned that El Niño was being “supersized before our eyes” and that the world should brace for extreme weather. He said: “The planet is in uncharted waters, and those waters are heating up.”
In Britain, the direct impact of El Niño can be harder to discern but forecasters have warned of the likelihood of a wet and stormy autumn and early winter. The Met Office has said the weather phenomenon can increase the risk of colder UK winters.
Watch more from The i Paper
Strawberry fields for ever as gene-edited fruit to hit UK shelves
Gene-edited strawberries and tomatoes could soon be in British supermarkets for the first time after the Government gave the green light for final approval of the foodstuffs.
The Food Standards Agency will now have the final say on whether the products – a longer-growing strawberry and tomatoes with increased vitamin D – can be offered to consumers.
What you need to know
- Gene-edited foodstuffs have had their DNA adjusted to enhance or delete certain natural attributes such as ripening times or nutrient levels.
- In this case, “sunshine” tomatoes have been created by the Norfolk-based John Innes Institute with as much vitamin D as two eggs. A US company has also created eight strawberry varieties that fruit for longer.
- Crucially the technique is different from genetic modification, where material is added to an organism. With gene editing no additional DNA is introduced.
How will gene-edited fruit benefit consumers?
The Food Standards Agency now has the final say on whether the tomato and strawberry varieties can be offered to consumers after the Government approved the precision-bred plants.
Scientists say the fruits will look and taste the same as equivalent non gene-edited products. The result will be in an extended growing season for strawberries and tomatoes with the same amount of vitamin D as 28g of tuna.
Watch more from The i Paper
He added: “I put the fracture then. That’s when they felt that this idea of sucking up to the West in the hope that they’d be taken seriously and put at the top table wasn’t going to work.”
During our 2024 conversation, Hill expressed a similar view. “That [the Iraq war] really shifts thinking in Russia and many other places in that world about what the United States was up to.”
In the last four years, we have naturally seen Ukraine as the focus of Russia’s renewed confrontational stance with the West.
But it also has roots in the Iraq war, the US and UK’s consequential response to that smoke I saw rising from ruins in Manhattan a quarter of a century ago.