In the past three years, this ghastly war has taught us one thing – never, ever under-estimate the Ukrainians. Their audacity is undimmed. Their heroism puts doubters to shame.
Today, they are again on the offensive in Kursk, surprising Putin and taking miles of territory within Russia itself. Across the whole of the Eastern front, they continue to keep the Russian war machine at bay.
Putin has slaughtered hundreds of thousands of young Russians, burning through prodigious quantities of tanks and cash – and for what? What was once hailed as the second most powerful military on earth is in a state of chronic humiliation, stymied by Ukrainian pluck.
The Russian tyrant’s deadline for recapturing the Kursk salient was October last year. Then it was January 2025, and still he can’t do it.
He was driven to the bizarre expedient of recruiting 11,000 North Korean troops, who began with a reputation as Pyongyang-lobotomised robots, charging crazily at the guns. Today, the poor bashi-bazouks* are begging to go home, tormented by the pitiless drones.
After more than six months of trying, Putin still can’t take the supposedly crucial eastern Ukrainian town of Pokrovsk. He still has only 18 per cent of Ukraine and has been pushed out of the vast majority of what he originally conquered.
If you ask why the Ukrainians are still fighting so hard – when the military experts said they would collapse within a week – the answer is simple.
People keep underestimating Ukraine because, like Putin, they fail to understand what Ukraine is, or how the Ukrainians see themselves or their future.
The difference between the Russians and the Ukrainians is that the Ukrainians are fighting for freedom, for their national right to determine their own destiny, and that emotion – patriotism – is one of the most powerful in the human breast.
Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump speak at a summit in Vietnam in 2017
They are fighting for their families, with the extra fervour of soldiers who know their cause is unimpeachably just, that they are on the side of good against evil. They know what Putin knows; that before the February 2022 invasion, their country posed no conceivable threat to Russia.
Like Putin, they know that until that invasion there was not a cat in hell’s chance that Ukraine would join Nato – or station Western missiles on Ukrainian soil. They know with blazing fury the whole thing is a lie, a fraud, and that Putin invaded for entirely cynical reasons.
He did it because he wanted to distract from his domestic difficulties, because he thought he could rally his country with a short, sharp nationalist adventure. He did it because he wanted to rebuild the Russian empire dismantled at the end of the Cold War, and above all he did it because he thought that he could get away with it.
He did it, insanely, because he thought the Ukrainians wouldn’t fight and the West would acquiesce. The Ukrainians can see his lies, his cruelty, his fundamental dishonesty – and that also spurs them on.
When you look at what the Ukrainians have done in the past three years you have to wonder: what else could they have achieved, if we had actually given them all the support they needed?
Our help has been crucial – but it has always come with too much dither and delay, too much anxiety about the risk of ‘escalation’, when that risk has proved illusory, time after time, because the one man who fears escalation is Putin himself.
In so far as we have had a strategy, in the past two years or so, it has been to do enough to stop the Ukrainians losing – but never to do enough to ensure they win.
What is Britain’s ultimate vision for Ukraine? We used to be clear on this. Now it is French President Emmanuel Macron who campaigns for Ukrainian membership of Nato, while London says nothing.
We have done nothing like enough to rally the other Europeans or to dispel some of the caution of the Biden White House.
The result is that for all the hundreds of billions America and Europe have so far spent backing the Ukrainians, we have collectively been letting them down. That is why it is so important and so hopeful that the US is now under new and different leadership.
It was Donald Trump who had the mental robustness to break the taboo on giving lethal weapons to Ukraine, those crucial Javelin missiles, and he has exactly the courage now needed, at this critical moment, to stand up to Putin.
Trump can see the problem as well as anyone else. He can see the trap. You can’t hope to end the war with some kind of territorial partition – not just because it would be in principle wrong to give away Ukrainian land to the invader, but also because this war isn’t mainly about territory.
It’s about destiny. It’s about where Ukraine belongs, what Ukraine is, and whether the Ukrainians are allowed to decide that for themselves. It would be a total abomination – and the Ukrainians would never accept it – if there were some ‘deal’ that simply froze the conflict, and allowed Putin to remain in control of his conquered lands.
Unless we settle Ukraine’s destiny as part of the West, protected by Western security guarantees, Putin will be handed a triumph. He will keep what he has, and use his position to destabilise and attack Ukraine, by whatever means, until the government of Kyiv collapses, a civil war breaks out, and the whole demoralised country drifts back into his baleful orbit.
Look, he will be able to say to the Ukrainians: the West told you for 20 years they would get you into Nato; they told you to fight for your freedom – and then they let you down.
That is the message – that the West lets you down – that Putin wants the world to hear. That is the message Chinese president Xi Jinping wants the world to hear. We can’t let that happen.
This is the moment to shock Putin with the strength of our resolve; and if anyone can produce that element of shock it is Donald J Trump.
Before any deal can be done, we should blast away the bureaucracy currently choking the flow of weapons to Ukraine. Billions have been allocated but not yet converted into military support. If necessary, Elon Musk’s accounting ninjas should sort it out.
Then we should accept Trump is right to want some sort of recompense for the US’s colossal support, not just the rare earth deal (Trump is keen on an idea floated by Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelensky last year to guarantee supply of vital metals needed by industry to the US), but also by unlocking the $300billion of frozen Russian assets.
They could be legally used to cover war damage suffered by Ukraine, on the understanding a large chunk goes back to the US.
Finally, the UK, France, and others should prepare to put boots on the ground, and to protect Ukraine, after a ceasefire, on the clear understanding Ukraine is now on an irreversible path to EU and Nato membership.
Nothing else will do. Nothing else works, for Ukraine or the world. This war will only be over when Putin finally understands that Ukraine is never coming back under his thumb.
