Before war fatigue sets in further, a rethink needed to avoid a years-long conflict
peaking at a private dinner in London recently, a senior serving British military officer argued that the west had no choice but to seeas just one phase in a decade-long battle with Russia. “If Ukraine wins, Russia will never accept that. If Russia wins, it will go further,” he said.
In Italy, the prime minister, Mario Draghi, one of the steadiest European voices on Ukraine, is under pressure over arm sales to Kyiv and has seen his foreign minister, Luigi di Maio, quit the Five Star Movement to form another parliamentary group to back him. In the UK, Boris Johnson has survived a no-confidence vote within the Tory party but now seems to see populist domestic dividing lines, not Ukraine, as his route to salvation.
So what to do? One faction led by the UK and Poland demands these summits must be a hard-headed and honest council of war, not confined to discussions about abstract future strategic defence concepts, global investment funds or self-congratulatory praise of democracy.
The Estonian prime minister, Kaja Kallas, told the Guardian “War fatigue is kicking in. Russia is playing on us getting tired. We must not fall into the trap. Ukraine’s position is deteriorating and Russia is more aggressive than ever because they want to show the victories back home, so it is getting more and more difficult.”
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