Which means that everyone – including, alas, everyone in Ukraine – is going to have to find a way to live with a surly autocracy. [ Lara Marlowe: Two weeks in Ukraine taught me there are no easy answers ]After heroic Ukraine resistance to his all-out invasion exploded Putin’s pipedreams, the West fell into its own reveries of victory. But the West can’t do the first of these things to Russia either – at least not without starting a nuclear war. Given that the Ukraine war is now almost a decade old, is another decade of attrition sustainable? If the answer is no, the only logical strategy for the West would seem to be to help Ukraine to define victory differently.

Source: The Irish Times September 06, 2023 07:24 UTC