With the right tools, Ukraine can still finish this job

After two years of merciless destruction that has left cities flattened, millions dead, wounded or displaced, plus an unknown number of children kidnapped and war crimes committed, it takes an effort to recall just how almost casually it started.

A column of unprotected Russian tanks trundled south from the border on the comparatively short, 236-mile journey to the Ukrainian capital, as if they were driving to the shops. Long before they reached Kyiv, they had been stopped and, shortly after, they retreated.

Whatever gains Russia made in the east were purely temporary, and most have been won back by the Ukrainians, particularly in the earlier phases of the war. The Russian invaders were not, as perhaps some in the Kremlin dreamt they might, welcomed with flowers and the traditional gifts of bread and salt as they “liberated” Ukraine from its supposed Nazi masters.

Volodymyr Zelensky, supposed puppet of the West, did not immediately flee into exile in some comfortable mansion in western Europe or America, constantly living in fear of assassination. The joyous victory parade headed by Vladimir Putin in Kyiv has had to be put back indefinitely. The “special military operation” that was meant to last a couple of weeks, at the most, has dragged on for two gruesome years, and it would not be surprising if it were still unresolved in two years’ time.

Whatever else, then, the war has proved infinitely more difficult for Russia than anyone, friend or foe, expected in February 2022. In many respects, it has been a disaster. It is, indeed, impossible to see the war ever being “won” by Russia in the sense that all of Ukraine would be annexed, and the population ever acquiescing in any occupation and, no doubt, cruel repression of their language, culture and aspirations. The Russians would find themselves fighting a long guerilla war, even if they managed to force Ukraine to surrender, just as they did in Afghanistan.

Ukraine is never going to be a friend of Russia, let alone a loyal constituent republic in the Russian Federation – in reality, a colony. What Russia has achieved instead is to awaken and augment an already strong sense of distinct Ukrainian nationhood, to the extent that even the local branch of the Orthodox Church has broken with Russia.

Ukraine has been pushed closer to Nato and the European Union – and instead of pushing Nato further back from Russia’s borders, the war has seen Sweden and Finland joining up, and the whole organisation suddenly revivified with a strong sense of common purpose, notwithstanding Donald Trump’s recent eccentric observations.

The economic sanctions on Russia, though leaky, have damaged the standard of living of Russians, and fresh impositions in response to the likely murder of Alexei Navalny will make life more difficult.

Yet Russia has not yet lost its war of aggression, and President Putin has two powerful incentives to press on, or at least hold the line with defences so impenetrable that it makes any Ukrainian offensive at the moment counterproductive. Both incentives have been offered up by America’s Trumpites, unfathomably sympathetic to the neo-Stalinists in the Kremlin.

At the moment, the Trumpites are preventing the flow of arms and money to help Ukraine defend itself and turn the tide. Without the $60bn (£47bn) stuck in Congress, no amount of Ukrainian bravery will prevail over the sheer numbers of Russian forces, and their elaborate defensive positions. Sadly, the chronic lack of ammunition for Ukraine is helping Russian forces, poorly led and equipped as they are, to regain hard-won Ukrainian positions and bridgeheads.

The second incentive for the Russians to keep going is the prospect of President Putin’s old friend Mr Trump returning to the White House. As president, Trump made the extraordinary remark at a summit with Mr Putin in Helsinki that he’d trust him as readily as America’s own security services. As president, and again now on the campaign trail, Trump has openly undermined the collective security guarantees in the North Atlantic Treaty.

His pledge to end the war in Ukraine “in one day” upon being elected suggests that he has no ambition to restore Ukrainian sovereignty; he would, to borrow a phrase, allow Putin to do what the hell he wants in his newly acquired Ukrainian lands with the blessing of the White House. That instinctive isolationism is only one reason of many why a second Trump term would be a calamity for America and the free world.

Meanwhile, Russian client states such as Belarus, rogueish allies in North Korea and Iran, and indulgent friends such as China and South Africa will connive to bust sanctions and send drones and other kit. Russia is isolated – but not enough to hasten its industrial collapse.

The challenge for the West, then, is more or less the same as it was on day one of the conflict – to help Ukraine win the war or, leastways, not lose it. That challenge risks being lost.

In the early days of the conflict, so nervous of Russia were some Western states that they would only despatch “non-lethal” material; the Germans were unwilling to send anything more deadly than helmets. Now the Ukrainians are in possession of much of the advanced technology that can help them prevail over the Russians’ numerical superiority of inferior tanks and aircraft. The large Russian Black Sea fleet has proven spectacularly vulnerable to Ukrainian naval drones, for instance. Much more could be achieved by the Ukrainians.

It is left too often unsaid that Ukrainian troops and civilians are, in many respects, fighting the battles that American, Polish, German, British and other soldiers would be faced with in due course under our Nato obligations. Ukraine’s frontline is the West’s frontline, and President Zelensky and his people have kept their side of the informal bargain, as friends and allies. They need shells, defence systems, drones, fighters, tanks and armoured vehicles.

The motto of the transatlantic alliance should be the one that proved so effective the last time Europe was at war – give them the tools and they will finish the job.