Putin again makes it clear that he is not interested in genuine negotiations, only in a Ukrainian surrender. Unfortunately, when he claims that Kyiv is running out of ammunition, he is not entirely wrong.
The US has sent very little for the past six months and the results are beginning to show on the battlefield. The new Ukrainian commander-in-chief, General Oleksandr Syrskii, warned last week: “There is a threat of enemy units advancing deep into our battle formations.”
The general did not elaborate, but experts warn that the Ukrainian front line is more fragile than it looks. The Czechs have raised money for 300,000 shells to resupply Kyiv’s artillery and hope to find another 500,000, while the British are spending £160 million on another 10,000 drones.
But the present war of attrition favours Russia. Not only is Moscow receiving more munitions from North Korea and Iran than from the whole of Nato, but the most powerful countries in Europe are dragging their feet.
In Berlin, Olaf Scholz appears to have ruled out the Taurus long-range missile system, having dithered for months. Even an offer from the UK to swap missiles in order to keep German troops out of Ukraine has failed to budge an increasingly dysfunctional coalition in Berlin. The German Chancellor’s indecision is final.
As for France: the hyperactive Emmanuel Macron, having initiated a discussion about sending Nato forces to Ukraine, is still doing little of a practical nature to meet Kyiv’s urgent needs.
Nuclear threats
Rather than loose talk about troops on the ground, it would be more useful for the two European nuclear powers to make it clear to Putin that Nato’s security guarantees do not only depend on who occupies the White House. If Trump and isolationism win over Biden and Atlanticism in November, the UK and France may perforce have to offer such reassurance to our allies.
This is why Putin keeps talking about the “nuclear triad”: the ability to deliver nuclear weapons by land, sea and air. Because only Russia and the US have this capability, he is dismissive of the British and French deterrents.
On paper the economic comparison between Europe and Russia is almost absurdly unequal. Europe has a GDP of some $20 trillion, compared to Russia’s $2 trillion. Nato’s European members will this year spend $380 billion on defence, compared to Russia’s $140 billion.
Admittedly, the Russian defence budget has grown by 29 per cent since 2023 and is now at its highest since the Cold War. Putin is now spending more on the military than on health and social services. Among Nato members, only Poland and the Baltic states are stepping up their defence in a comparable way.
Here, this month’s Budget ignored defence, despite urgent appeals from the British top brass and former defence secretaries to raise spending to 2.5 per cent immediately.
What could persuade the European members of Nato, many of whom are far from the minimum 2 per cent, to take the Russian threat seriously? Boris Pistorius, Berlin’s redoubtable Defence Minister, says that Germany will finally reach that threshold this year. But is it too little, too late?
Ukraine itself has taken a battering, not just from Russian drones and missiles, but from critics abroad. This month Pope Francis even called on Kyiv to hoist the white flag – thereby turning his back on a millennium and a half of Catholic doctrine on the “just war”.
Volodymyr Zelensky has seen worse. He gave the lie last week to idle speculation about a military coup led by General Zaluzhny, the sacked army chief, by announcing that Zaluzhny would be his new ambassador to Britain at the Court of St James.