Rising energy bills are a price worth paying to stop Putin

Nato countries are being careful not to do anything that Russia could claim is an act of war. Just look at the reluctance from the US to provide Ukraine with Polish fighter jets. Yet Britain and other Nato members are involved in a huge effort to break Vladimir Putin’s war machine through supplying Ukraine with weapons and imposing financial pressure on Moscow. Russia, a G20 country, has been severed from the world economy. It has now surpassed Iran as the most sanctioned country on Earth and it is beginning to occupy a similar economic position.

The speed with which Russia has been hit by these economic measures has been a display of the West’s financial power. Yet western politicians now have to rally their publics to accept the cost of the sanctions. If these measures are to act as an effective form of deterrence in the future, then the free world will have to show that it is prepared to endure the economic pain that goes with them.