The West is doing Putin’s work for him

Ukraine, as is periodically observed, means borderland. Geography will forever influence its destiny as an independent state. With tensions between East and West again rising, however, Kiev might well conclude that Ukraine is more accurately translated as ‘on the margins’.

Foreign leaders and ministers have, to be sure, been punctilious in making courtesy visits to President Zelensky and his team before or after paying court to President Putin in Moscow. But it must now be crystal clear to Kiev that — in a conflict essentially centred on Ukraine, though actually about much more — its western champions have at best considered Ukraine’s interests as secondary to the pursuit of the main quarrel with Russia, often not considering them at all.

How else to explain the flurry of developments over the past week? As Volodymyr Zelensky pressed on heroically with his message of keeping calm and carrying on, and most Ukrainians — quite astonishingly — did just that, the US and the UK together amplified their warnings of a Russian invasion.