The west is toying with the idea of letting Vladimir Putin have Ukraine. Newly committed western aid to the country dropped nearly 90 per cent from a year earlier, even before the US and EU failed this month to approve more funds, calculates the Kiel Institute for the World Economy. Voters, egged on by the pro-Putinist far right, are getting bored with Ukraine’s war. The west, after an 18-month hiatus, is resuming its 15-year appeasement of Putin’s aggression. “If Russia wins” is an increasingly plausible scenario. Here’s what that might look like:
1. Russia exacts terrible victor’s justice on Ukrainians. This isn’t speculation. It’s precisely what the Russians have already done in Ukraine: mass executions, castrations, rapes, torture and abductions of children. Remember Russia’s pre-invasion lists of Ukrainian public figures to be “removed”.
Guerrilla attacks by Ukrainian partisans would trigger more Russian reprisals. Millions more Ukrainians would flee west, this time permanently. Remember that the arrival of 1.3mn refugees in 2015 turbocharged Europe’s far right.