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MATTHEW SYED

This deal is a betrayal of Ukraine — yet we all bear responsibility

If we had not let Russia sell oil and buy parts for weapons, it would not now have the upper hand

The Sunday Times

Roughly once a fortnight since 2022 I’ve clicked on Sport Angels, a website that chronicles the Ukrainian sportspeople — men and women, boys and girls — who have died since the start of the war. I do this as a way, however tenuous, of glimpsing the human stories behind the cold statistics trotted out on the news, which can desensitise us to the scale of suffering unfolding on our continent.

I’ve read of Yuriy Yatskiv, a 26-year-old goalkeeper, who died in battle near Toretsk; of 17-year-old Vira Birukova, an outstanding basketball player killed with her sister by shelling in the Mykolaiv region; about Nastya, eight, and her ten-year-old brother Maxym Symaniuk (Nastya was a rhythmic gymnast; Maxym practised karate), who were killed with Zoryana, their mother, in a missile strike on Kyiv. Their father rushed home to find them lifeless in the rubble. Hundreds of sportspeople have been killed, the decimation of an entire generation of talent.

This war is about more, of course, than the deaths of sportspeople. I wish I had space to illuminate other pixels in this terrible panorama of suffering: the Ukrainian men tortured by Russian soldiers; the Ukrainian women raped en masse, such as Liudmyla (she didn’t want to give her surname), who bravely spoke to The New York Times: “I was helpless against him.” She said the soldier left six hours later, telling her he would come back and shoot her. I wish I could tell you about the thousands of children kidnapped and taken to Russia in an episode of pure evil, their parents left bereft and in many cases suicidal.

I mention all this to offer a modicum of moral clarity as the world seeks to decode the latest rambling tweet of Donald Trump. Some hope that his criticism of Putin might mean a tougher line on Russia, but the White House has already made clear that America will only accept a deal if it has privileged access to Ukraine’s mineral wealth while accepting (explicitly) Russia’s sovereignty over Crimea and (implicitly) the regions to the east it has illegally occupied.

But this isn’t a deal, is it? Indeed, it is eloquent testimony to just how far the goalposts have moved since inauguration day that merely asking Putin to accept concessions such as peacekeepers on the ground after the dismemberment of Ukraine is considered “positive” (as one diplomat put it). I suggest that even if this is better than no security guarantees at all, it still offers a green light to other tyrants to transgress borders, confident they can do so with impunity — indeed perhaps with the connivance of the world’s leading superpower as long as they carve Trump’s America into the deal.

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Yet what should perhaps concern us most is the narrative that continues to reverberate within Europe: namely, that Ukraine is on the verge of betrayal because of Trump and Trump alone and that it is a pity that America didn’t elect someone who shared Europe’s instincts to offer rock solid support. This is the story that has been spun since the start of the war, one in which leaders from London to Paris, Berlin to Brussels, have talked about “resolve” and “solidarity”, “unity” and “sacrifice”. It is, I’m afraid, delusional nonsense.

You see, I don’t think blame can be put solely at the door of Trump, given that western hypocrisy has stalked this conflict since day one. I mean, if Europe were serious about standing up to Putin, why have we never properly enforced the sanctions supposed to “cripple” the Russian economy? Why has laundered Russian oil been sold in huge volumes — one reason Russia had one of the fastest-growing economies in 2024? A report from Global Witness estimated that “35 million barrels of Russian oil entered the EU in the form of refined petroleum products” in 2023 alone. It also found that 1 in every 20 UK flights ran on jet fuel made from Russian oil, providing huge revenues for Putin to buy lethal armaments.

And from where is Russia getting these weapons, beyond its allies in North Korea, China and Iran? The British government doesn’t tend to publicise that “high-priority military items” and drone parts are being sold in bulk to former Soviet satellites for onward transport to Moscow, despite a much-vaunted export ban. In other words, the weapons used to massacre Ukrainian innocents contain thousands of western components (as discovered by investigators examining Russian munitions on Ukraine soil), including from the UK, whose companies are making a killing, literally, from this trade — as documented by my colleague Ed Conway.

This context is, I think, crucial at a time when Trump is being scapegoated for every sin in the world, acting as a lightning rod for leaders who don’t wish to be held to account for their own pusillanimity. Still, now, the UK isn’t stepping up on defence spending beyond a derisory one fifth of 1 per cent of GDP (and not until 2027), despite the warnings by military experts that we are not capable of adequately supporting allies, let alone defending ourselves. Trump is a morally reprehensible leader, but is that his fault? Or ours?

“Know thyself” was the maxim inscribed upon the temple of Apollo in the ancient Greek precinct of Delphi, and it is time for Europe to face up to this admonition. We have never been serious about Ukraine, not since the start of this all-out war; indeed not since we allowed Putin to annex Crimea in 2014 without so much as a peep. Is it serious to spend more (far more) on hydrocarbons from Russia than we provide in aid to Ukraine? Is it serious to resist the provision of sufficient weaponry for Ukraine to win, the unchanging pattern under President Biden, blinded by the fear that Putin might be “provoked” by a signal of strength, when the risk of escalation is far higher if this bully scents weakness?

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What will perhaps confound future historians most is a simple statistic: the GDP of the EU and UK combined is 11 times the size of Russia’s (our population is almost four times larger). On paper, then, this is the greatest mismatch since Soviet tanks rolled into Finland in 1939. But our problem is that, as Seneca intimated, success in war is not just about how much you have, but how much you are prepared to give up. This is the Achilles heel of the western world, a civilisation with much to admire but that has become incapable of matching its capabilities with an arguably even more crucial imperative: will. Note the wailing when the UK welfare budget was trimmed for that minuscule increase in defence spending. Indeed, this wasn’t even a reduction in the scale of benefits; merely a slight reduction in their unstoppable growth.

To any politician reading this column, let me say: you may be worried about raising defence spending to 4 or 5 per cent of GDP by proportionately cutting other departments, fearing a reckoning at the next election, but you’ll at least have your self-respect. Rearmament is not about warmongering but deterrence and peace. This is the oldest lesson on earth and, these days, with Europe edging closer towards conflagration, the least understood.

Ukraine is on the front line of a battle for civilisation against Russia and the axis of tyrants in which it is ever more tightly enmeshed. With Trump in the White House, we can no longer depend on America and must stand — for now — on our own two feet. We have the capacity to do so. The real question is different: do we have the will?

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