Timothy Garton Ash writes:

Earlier this week, I started a 3,000km, two-day journey back from the other end of Europe, where I witnessed Ukrainian resilience against Russian terror in the besieged city of Kharkiv. A university lecturer told me that from a 12th storey balcony in a north-eastern suburb she had actually seen the flashes of missiles taking off from launchpads just across the frontier, in the Russian city of Belgorod. An S-300 missile can reach Kharkiv from Belgorod in about 30 seconds, so you have no time to hide. If it’s not a missile, it’s a glide bomb launched from a Russian warplane – and so, day after day, death rains indifferently down.

After more than 900 days of the largest war in Europe since 1945, Ukraine is approaching a perilous moment of truth. The Ukrainian David has courage and innovation, but the Russian Goliath has ruthlessness and mass. In an underground location in Kharkiv, I was shown highly sophisticated, novel military uses of IT and drones. With its Cossack-style innovation, the country has developed more than 200 different kinds of drone.

A joke has it that two Ukrainian activists meet for a drink:

“How’s your drone company doing?”

“Great, thanks, but how did you know I have one?”

“Of course you do!”

I find the bravery of Ukrainian soldiers constantly humbling, but they are being ground down by the sheer scale of Russia’s assault and the Kremlin’s willingness to use its own citizens as cannon fodder. Vladimir Putin has just ordered an increase of the Russian military on active service to a target figure of 1.5 million. “It’s all about the numbers,” a senior Ukrainian military intelligence officer told me. Ukraine’s daring incursion into the Kursk region of Russia has given a psychological boost, but opinions are sharply divided about its strategic wisdom.

In the eastern Ukrainian region of Donetsk, there’s a real danger of a Russian breakthrough if Putin’s forces take the logistical hub of Pokrovsk. Ukrainians are exhausted. Trauma lurks just beneath the surface. Several times I saw the eyes of tough soldiers grow damp when they mentioned their fallen comrades. About half the country’s energy infrastructure has been destroyed. This winter will be cruel. Meanwhile, the west continues to hesitate and hold back, fearful of escalation – led (if that’s the word) in this regard by the US president, Joe Biden.

Seeing all this, Ukrainian leaders are making a new pitch. Having for two years talked only of total victory, defined as recovering all the country’s territory in the frontiers of 1991, including Crimea and Donbas, they now speak of reaching a position where Ukraine can negotiate from strength. Unlike many in the west, however, they understand that the only way to get there is to turn the tide on the battlefield: to knock Goliath sharply back on his heels, if not his arse. The insight is crucial. A central Asian leader who knows Putin well was asked by a western interlocutor whether the Russian president will negotiate. Yes, came the prompt reply, “when his generals tell him he’s losing”. [Continue reading…]