President Obama was accused of caving in to pressure from Russia tonight after announcing he was abandoning plans for a US missile shield in Eastern Europe. The president’s decision to scrap George Bush’s controversial (pounds) 2.5 billion shield system in Poland and the Czech Republic was immediately welcomed in Moscow. But it left countries in the former Soviet sphere concerned that Mr Obama was less willing to stand up to Russia than his predecessors in the White House. Coming on the 70th anniversary of the Soviet invasion of Poland at the beginning of World War Two, the timing of the...