It is clear what is required to end this war. Ukraine needs to be given the weapons to defend itself and in so doing to raise the costs for Putin so much so that he, or his successor, cannot go on. Anything else, notes the former US ambassador Dennis Jett, is just a strategy to appease a dictator.

We shall not forget that any peace that ignores justice, law and credible guarantees does not conclude the conflict; it transposes it into the next phase. Civilisations do not decay because they lose battles. They decay because they lose the conviction that certain outcomes must not be permitted, regardless of cost. When that conviction falters, order becomes a negotiation with entropy.