How Ukraine can win

If Ukraine lasts for another thousand years, people will still say, ‘This was their finest hour.’ The Ukrainians’ magnificent defiance will shape their country’s image in the world for generations to come, as the lone stand led by Winston Churchill did for Britain. But what almost certainly awaits Ukrainians in the next few days is far worse than what the British went through in 1940. They are about to face a Russian campaign of long-distance bombardment and siege to try to break their will to resist, through fear, hunger, thirst, cold, sickness and all the other consequences of indiscriminate destruction. Mariupol has already been devastated. Now the Chechen butcher Ramzan Kadyrov has announced he is in Ukraine, knife sharpened for more butchery. Ukrainian mayors of capital cities have been abducted and western intelligence agencies report Russian plans for public executions. In a word: terror.

‘We will never surrender,’ said Daniel Bilak, a lawyer turned home army defender of Kiev, in a video discussion I participated in a few days ago. Another Churchillian echo. Later on, as Russian forces close in on the Ukrainian capital, he emails me to express his hope that he will make it ‘beyond tomorrow’. He adds an emoji, but there is no emoji adequate for that thought.

Discussion of the war in Ukraine far too quickly slides off onto other subjects – what if Putin attacks Nato? What about China? What does this mean for our economy and the future of world order? All very important issues, of course, but don’t let them distract us from the most urgent question: what can we do to help Ukrainians defend their country, their freedom and their democracy?

President Volodymyr Zelensky gives a clear answer in the tweets he sends following every conversation with a European leader. (If you don’t already follow him on Twitter, please do.