View from London: “We would be much better occupied promoting a lasting peace than in fuelling and paying to prolong a war in which actual Ukrainians die”

UK Foreign Office chief J.Cleverly and President V.Zelensky in Kyiv

Is Ukraine stuck? Wars can be very unpredictable – especially in their early weeks – but there are a lot of signs that Ukraine has run into political and military trouble, writes Peter Hitchens, an observer of London ‘Daily Mail’.

The USA is still (wisely) dead set against involving itself directly in the war, so what will break the stalemate? Does this just have to go on and on filling graveyards and doing severe economic damage to Ukraine and Europe? With what aim?

I am no military expert. I haven't fired a proper gun for about 40 years and was not much of a shot when I did. But I can sniff the wind as well as anyone, and when the mighty US magazine ‘Foreign Affairs’ publishes a major article with the title ‘Will The West Abandon Ukraine?’ (to which the answer, in my view, is 'quite possibly') I think something is going on.

I've never been able to grasp what Britain's interest is in sustaining a costly and risky war in South-East Europe between two hunks of the old Soviet Empire. A lot of US Republicans, not just the ghastly Trump, are also doubtful about the point of it.

Honestly, if this war had not been so widely portrayed in crude storybook terms as a super-simple fight between total good and total evil, which it isn't, we might have reached this stage before. But better late than never.

If our concern is truly for the people of Ukraine, then we would be much better occupied promoting a lasting peace than in fuelling and paying to prolong a war in which actual Ukrainians die and suffer, and gain nothing much in return.

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