« It is clear what is required to end this war. Ukraine needs to be given the weapons to defend itself and in so doing to raise the costs for Putin so much so that he, or his successor, cannot go on. Anything else, notes the former US ambassador Dennis Jett, is just a strategy to appease a dictator. »
— Basil Gavalas & Greg Mills from a piece called "Four Years On – Ten Lessons from Russia’s War in Ukraine" at the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI).
Despite the acronym, RUSI has nothing to do with Putin's Russia. It's a British think tank founded in 1831 by the Duke of Wellington which focuses on defense and security. The article makes a strong case on behalf of Ukraine.
This West has blown an opportunity to sideline Russia as a security threat for a generation.
Surprising that the US and Europe have not seen it in their interests to have Ukraine win and remove Russia as a conventional military threat for a long time. It would not have required a massive amount of military effort from the West since Ukraine was willing to do the fighting. Victory – defined as the expulsion of Russia from Ukrainian soil – would have allowed Europe to settle its security dilemmas for a generation or more. But the West has lacked the imagination to think of a Russian defeat, and consequently the politics to carry this out.
Russia may look huge on Mercator projection maps but has a GDP smaller than that of Italy. Outside of its biggest cities, Russia is a poor country. An astronomical percentage of the national budget maintains a large but incompetent military while a fifth of all rural households still lack indoor plumbing.
