G7 nations must stand by Ukraine, and hope Putin realises an invasion would be a mistake

Vladimir Putin, the president of Russia, is not going to be deterred from invading Ukraine by ringing declarations from western summit meetings. So while it is important that the foreign ministers of the G7 nations should show a united and resolute defence of Ukrainian sovereignty at their two-day summit in Liverpool this weekend, it is not going to be decisive.

What will in the end put the Russian leader off trying to annex Ukraine, if it does, will be the huge cost and difficulty of maintaining the occupation of the country. Taking over the Crimea and parts of the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine, with their Russian-speaking populations, is one thing. Occupying the rest of Ukraine, a large, populous and proud nation, would on the other hand be a huge and expensive undertaking.

No one doubts that the Russian military would be capable of invading Ukraine. Russia still has armed forces out of proportion to its economic strength, as a legacy of the Cold War, and would probably prevail over Ukraine in a conventional war. But Mr Putin must know that controlling a population that would resist an occupation would be a different matter entirely.

The G7 foreign ministers must make it clear, as Liz Truss, the UK foreign secretary, said, that there would be “severe consequences” for Russia if it invaded Ukraine. The G7 would be right to threaten sanctions. Even if Mr Putin does not attack Ukraine, the G7 should undertake to wean the rest of Europe off its reliance on Russian gas supplies. This may be made easier by the presence in Liverpool of Annalena Baerbock, the new German foreign minister from the Green party, which opposes the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline from Russia to Germany.

But the most “severe consequences” for Russia of invading Ukraine would come not from sanctions or international condemnation, but from Ukraine itself. For that reason, G7 ministers should make it clear that they stand by the people of Ukraine and – without suggesting interference in the internal affairs of a sovereign nation – make it clear that democratic nations would support the Ukrainian people in making any occupation untenable.

That was presumably what Ms Truss meant when she said that military aggression against Ukraine would be a “strategic mistake”. Indeed it would be, not just because it would isolate Russia in the international community, but because the price of an imperial adventure would be so high.

Mr Putin is already concealing the death of Russian soldiers in Donbas from the Russian people with some difficulty. If he were to occupy less pro-Russian parts of Ukraine, the death toll and the financial costs would only mount.

The G7 ministers must obviously stand firm and united against military aggression, but they must also hope that Mr Putin is engaged in a game of bluff – succeeding in even convincing western intelligence agencies that he is preparing to invade – designed to intimidate the Ukrainian government. It may be that the most effective measure to deploy against the Russian president is to gently draw his attention to the many ways in which an invasion is contrary to his own best interests.