Tom Peck's Sketch: Riddle wrapped in a mystery – and that’s just Philip Hammond

A shock revelation from a man called Philip Hammond, who you might know is the Foreign Secretary. “Putin does not see shades of grey,” he breezily announced at the despatch box, prompting immediate speculation as to why he was wasting his time in Whitehall and not wandering invisible around the Kremlin, harvesting crucial Russian state secrets.

If you don’t know who Philip Hammond is, imagine John Major’s Spitting Image puppet without the glasses and without the animator’s arm up its back. As Foreign Secretary, it fell to him to give the Government’s position on news that Russia claims to be ending its military operations in Syria.

Asked whether the media reports could be believed, his answer was positively Churchillian. “We have no insight at all into Russia’s strategy, Russia’s thinking and Russia’s tactics, so we are left guessing,” he said, as Winston himself should have said instead of that riddle/mystery/enigma nonsense. (He is believed to have been halfway through the latest Dan Brown novel at the time).

It’s a complicated situation. Take eastern Ukraine, for example. As Kevin Foster pointed out, when Russian troops say they’re pulling out, they have a tendency to reappear, speaking Russian, firing Russian weapons and eating Russian rations, only with the badges gone from their lapels.

“I cannot rule that out, but what we are primarily talking about here is air forces, and that trick is a little more difficult to perform in the case of advanced strike aircraft,” Hammond replied. It’s possible it was a joke, but we can never know.

Labour’s shadow Defence Secretary also noted a statement from Russia’s Defence Minister that Russia “would continue to attack so-called terrorists”, these so-called terrorists not being the so-called Isis but rather the forces that Britain and the West are hoping will eventually replace the Assad government.

To be fair to Putin, “terrorist” is a confusing term. The two Russians who spent months preparing the polonium-210 murder of Alexander Litvinenko in such a way as to make it look like natural causes and be entirely undetectable were recently called “nuclear terrorists” by Andy Burnham. Gordon Brown once thought Icelandic banks were run by terrorists and used anti-terrorist legislation to withdraw British savings from them.

The Russian spin on the matter is that it is their bombs that will now guide Assad and the rest to the negotiating table. “Job done!” The Russian ambassador to Britain declared. “Mission accomplished. Russian strikes in Syria created conditions for political settlement.”

Hammond was more sceptical. “I have said this in the House before. President Putin could have ended all this years ago by a single phone call to President Assad, offering him some fraternal advice about his future health and wellbeing.”

It’s possible he’s told Putin as much himself. A pity he can’t see him.