It has struck me since the "beginning" in 2022 that the only people entitled to judge what Ukraine should and should not give up are Ukrainians. Our responsibility and entitlements end with supporting their choice to join us, the West, and helping them to make that choice autonomously rather than under duress. If they choose to submit or give up land for peace we really have to live with their choice.

My wife is a Russophile and travelled in the Ostblock, including Russia, prior to the Mauerfall. She speaks highly of the Russians and is bewildered by Putin's travesty. Everyone I know who has got to know Russians seems to love them. I recently re-read Nineteen Eighty-Four and am currently exercised by the strangeness of totalitarianism, towards which I think we can say that Russia is again sliding. It's very hard to understand societies in which truth is whatever the Great Leaders says it is and good people go along with it, yet we've already seen it more than once. Quite frightening.