Two years on, the Ukraine war matters more than ever

There are inevitably voices in the West questioning the value of committing more than £5.5 billion a month in support of the war in Ukraine. It looks for now deadlocked at best, and at worst – in light of the recent Russian capture of Avdiivka – a slow defeat. Yet it is important to realise just how the Ukraine war matters to the world outside that country’s borders, even if perhaps not quite in the ways some would suggest.

There is much overheated talk about a Ukrainian defeat leading to a direct threat to Nato. Some presume that this means the whole country falling to Vladimir Putin and Russian troops drawn up along the Romanian border. However, the whole notions of what a Ukrainian ‘defeat’ means now are as hazy as a ‘victory.’ Furthermore, suggestions that it would only take a few years for Moscow to reconstitute its badly-mauled forces so that it can launch a new war make some very questionable assumptions about Russia’s industrial capacity, its ability to keep spending at a breakneck rate, and Putin’s interest in any such dangerous adventure.