But it is not yet five months since Volodymyr Zelensky’s visit to the Oval Office ended abruptly — and in humiliating fashion — after Trump dressed down his Ukrainian opposite number, accusing him of “gambling with World War III”. Trump’s months-long charm offensive with Vladimir Putin, meanwhile, was characterized by lengthy and seemingly convivial phone calls that flattered the Russian president’s ego. Nonetheless, it did not budge the Kremlin’s position on the war. An apparently irate Trump, who styles himself as the ur-peacemaker, now claims to want to “finish” the war through other means. On the surface, it seems as if Trump’s policy toward Russia and Ukraine has entirely shifted in the last two weeks.

If Trump is still committed to ending the war in Ukraine, which last autumn he promised he could do in 100 days, then he has decided — for the time being at least — to achieve that goal by forcing Vladimir Putin to back down rather than giving him what he wants. Today, he is not just promising a restored weapons supply, he is even purportedly asking Zelensky if he can strike deep into Russian territory, potentially as far as Moscow. “Absolutely”, reportedly replied Zelensky, “We can, if you give us the weapons.” Is this a new Trump, whose electoral commitment to isolationism and peace has seen him launch attacks on Iran and now promise to use American military might to bend Moscow to his will? And if this new, serious Trump is willing to use such levers to get his way, do his intentions go beyond a change in policy toward Russia and Ukraine?

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The halls of power in Washington are riven with divides over these questions. A substantial group, including, most notably, Under Secretary of Defense for Policy Elbridge Colby, have been vocal advocates for a rapprochement with Moscow, which they see as a means to disrupt the emerging Russia-China partnership by trying to get on side with Moscow and thus weaken Beijing. Meanwhile, another group, including Senator Lindsey Graham, advocates for a more hawkish policy toward Russia that resembles Cold War-era visions of containment and would play well with an American public that remains deeply suspicious of Vladimir Putin’s Russia. In recent days, analysts have struggled to understand where Trump stands, given that the president now seems to be as critical of Vladimir Putin as he has been of Xi Jinping, and whether his new approach will last.

The explanation for the last fortnight’s events is as simple as it is frustrating for analysts and Ukraine’s military planners: although the White House’s policy in the short-term may have changed, the underlying logic of Trump’s behavior remains just the same. Few can disagree that Donald Trump — ever since the Eighties, and certainly since 2016 — has been a creature who feeds on, and whose persona has been created by, media attention. It is Vladimir Putin’s continued stalling over giving Trump the grandest of all headlines — Trump as the great peacemaker in Ukraine, Trump as a potential Nobel Peace Prize winner — that is likely motivating the president to change tack today.

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Trump seems to feed on news coverage that, whether as hero or villain, makes him out as the protagonist of the story: the deal-maker who calls the shots. Look at how often he complains of being treated unfairly by the media, how he stages extravagant shows of signing executive orders and appearing in the White House to dictate the run of political play, and how he even brought a military parade to Washington in June. Trump’s staged phone calls with Putin, his elaborately orchestrated peace talks in Saudi Arabia, and his Oval Office blow-up with Zelensky — all of which favored the Russian president — have come to nought.

Moreover, theatrics sympathetic to Putin now offer diminishing media coverage, as the public have become used to them. Unlikely to succeed, making another offering to Putin would be of little interest to a fatigued public and media. What better than to perform an outrageous volte-face, play the strong man, and generate endless inches of media coverage in articles just like this one? Look past the headlines, and Trump is behaving entirely predictably, at least according to his own lights.

Unsurprisingly, then, the Russian political apparatus is totally unfazed by what seems like terrifying news for a country whose economy is barely running on fumes and which can barely stop Ukraine’s makeshift drone strikes, let alone repel offensive US-made weaponry. The Russian stock market surged in response to the news of the weapons deal and Trump’s talk of sanctions, while former Russian president and current Security Council member Dmitry Medvedev on Twitter dismissed Trump’s move as a “theatrical ultimatum.” Hardly known for his political nous, even Medvedev has Trump pegged.

Should Trump make good on his latest promises — and there is no guarantee that the weapons systems at hand will make their way to Ukraine, let alone be used for offensive strikes on Russia itself — the war might well be prolonged or even turned. That, of course, would still turn on Ukraine being able to strike deep and hard enough into Russian territory to affect the population en masse or to cause fear of a military collapse among the Russian elites. Should massive tariffs or wide sanctions on Russia also be implemented, Trump and Ukraine may even force a desperate Putin to the negotiating table. Until they do, Volodymyr Zelensky and his allies — especially the NATO nations that have been on tenterhooks ever since the American president was inaugurated in January — will at least be pleased with this new spirit of collaboration.

Nonetheless, they will remain hesitant about whether a man like Donald Trump can really commit to a long-term policy of military support for both Ukraine and the Western alliance. In a BBC interview on 14 July, Trump admitted that he trusts “almost nobody”. Should Vladimir Putin find a way to stroke the president’s ego, give him an opportunity for a grand media spectacle, and allow him to make some more headlines, another sudden U-turn might be in the offing. State visits, gifts, and all sorts of other attention-generating moves might be enough.

Meanwhile, there is only one big winner from this chaos. As Trump continues to blow hot and cold with his allies, eroding stability and certainty in both the financial and security worlds, Xi Jinping will look on with calm confidence. Until Trump commits to a coherent, long-term strategy that will ensure American economic dominance and military superiority continue — and that would likely mean continued and transparent cooperation with either NATO or another group of reliable allies, a move that today seems unlikely — the day that China overtakes the USA as the world’s superpower only looks to grow closer.

My visit was shrouded in secrecy. No one was to know where I was going. So we met beside a nondescript bank in Kyiv to ensure the taxi driver did not discover our destination. I was led along a cluster of ordinary streets filled with residential blocks, offices and shops — and sharply told to stop my questions when we passed a woman walking her dog. Then, suddenly, we ducked down into a basement and I was ushered through a heavy door.

I found myself in a clandestine white-walled workshop cluttered with shelves of tools, boxes of machine parts and spools of wire. Here, a handful of men in their 20s and 30s were making some of the most sophisticated military drones on earth.  The future of warfare was being built before my eyes.

A Buntar 3 drone was there on a table with its wings removed. It looked like a big model aircraft, with its gray fuselage and tail propeller. But these craft, almost four meters long, are highly complex machines that cost up to $100,000 each. They take off and land vertically using four wing-mounted rotor blades before flying like conventional aircraft with a range of 80 kilometers. They can remain airborne for more than three hours. The carbon-fiber body contains a $30,000 camera with thermal imaging capabilities to detect enemy positions day or night. This is backed up with sophisticated software created from combat experience that integrates tools to monitor altitude, weather and terrain with the Delta battle management platform used by Ukrainian forces, which links to artificial intelligence systems.

There were 31 small stickers on its fuselage — 23 black ones marking its test flights and 8 red ones denoting combat missions on the frontline of the grim war despoiling the biggest country in Europe. Bohdan Sas, the firm’s 26-year-old co-founder, showed me around a rabbit-warren of rooms, pointing out carbon fiber being painstakingly layered, compressed in vacuum packs and spray-painted, explaining how they had created specialist software to speed and simplify military operations.

Bohdan with a Buntar 3 drone which can cost up to $100,000. Photo: Ian Birrell.

Welcome to the weapons factory of the future. For this is not just the sort of place where the war in Ukraine might be lost or won. These fast-evolving drones are changing the way that battles are now fought the world over. “In places like this, we are pushing the boundaries of warfare and reconnaissance,” says Sas, who started his career in technology as a teenager linking dumbbells to fitness trackers. “Because of the war, both Russia and Ukraine have developed their drone technology incredibly quickly.”

Buntar Aerospace — set up two years ago, spread across several locations and also making cheaper reconnaissance craft — is one of about 250 such drone-makers that have sprung up across Ukraine. Some are buried like this one in basements, others are located in smart IT office hubs or crumbling former Soviet factories. Together they reveal how the art of war is evolving with amazing rapidity in this country as unmanned land, air and sea vehicles reshape 21st-century combat. Innovative firms and creative brains are disrupting the defense industry in a world where even homemade drones can destroy expensive military aircraft, ships and tanks. “Right now there are only two countries in the world that really know how to fight this new type of war — Russia and Ukraine,” says Sas. And as I was told by several Ukrainian experts — from defense analysts through to frontline drone operators — this should be causing grave concern in Europe.

The new military age dawned at the end of 2020 in the Second Nagorno-Karabakh War, fought between Armenia and Azerbaijan, when waves of drones turned the tide of the battle in a mountainous region that traditionally favored defenders. The fighting lasted just 44 days — unlike the previous conflict between these two former Soviet republics that lasted six years — and resulted in decisive victory for Azerbaijan. Its drones, bought from Israel and Turkey, destroyed air defense systems, armored vehicles and artillery forces on the ground. They provided speed and intelligence with control and communications systems that hoovered up data and helped determine targets at lightning speed.

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Ukraine and Russia began using drones for intelligence and targeting after the Kremlin’s initial invasion of Crimea, with Russia developing an initial lead through exploiting Israeli technology. But Ukraine had also invested in Turkey’s Bayraktar drones and used them to great effect in repelling the mechanized Russian forces attempting to seize Kyiv three years ago. Yet as one Ukrainian drone operator told me last week, comparing the craft from 2022 — such as one that buzzed me in the Donbas trenches days before Moscow’s full-scale invasion — with those dominating today’s battlefield is “like comparing rocket science with the horse and cart.”

For Ukraine, necessity has been the mother of invention. As it fights for its survival, the nation has become a world leader in drone manufacture and warfare by exploiting previous strength in defense manufacturing, engineering and technology. “Ukraine has now started to be the creator of a new military doctrine,” says Mykhailo Samus, a military analyst and new generation warfare expert who argues that this arose from a need to deploy asymmetrical tactics against a much bigger foe. “We are fighting drone-centric warfare with drones now conducting different roles including first as the intelligence to find clear coordinates of the enemy, then of course as the weapon itself but also as the command and control system. So if you look at drones, they are weapons that can find and destroy.

Samus points out that the “kill cycle’” — the time it takes between obtaining coordinates of an enemy position, transferring this information to command and control, then taking the decision to fire a missile to destroy a target — can now be just a couple of seconds. This can be devastatingly effective and far less cumbersome than the old methods of battle.

So while all the tanks and trenches we see on news reports are eerily redolent of previous wars, this conflict offers a glimpse into a future of highly automated fighting. “This new doctrine changes all our understanding of military tactics”’ says Samus. “So it’s very important to have our own European understanding of this future, the battlefield future of war. This is the new reality.”

Yet the frequencies used to control drones and send back footage often change weekly in cat and mouse games with enemy-jamming systems — something impossible on many traditional military systems or civilian drones. So both sides are in a constant race to keep up with their adversary’s advances. Nations at war, I am told by one Ukrainian official, must “innovate or die.”

In a war dominated by drones, electronic warfare is both critical and complex. Bear in mind that until recently, armed forces relied on a handful of jamming stations to throw a ring of protection around their frontline. Ukraine’s military had fewer than 100 such systems — and they relied on the standard 900 megahertz frequency typically used for civilian drone telemetry. But now battlefield drones can use frequency bands ranging from 100 to 12,000 megahertz. Different frequencies, however, require different signal generators and antennas to detect and jam them.

So the following day I visit an electronic warfare company helping to shape this new reality of warfare. Unwave, formed less than two years ago, has 100 staff inside an old factory in Kyiv region who are churning out thousands of jamming devices each month. Walking round the factory, I find small clusters of workers building an astonishing array of devices from sophisticated, multi-channel jammers designed for fixing onto armored vehicles, through to smaller backpack-carried systems and handheld devices to alert soldiers to nearby drones costing $300 each.

Tetiana at the electronic warfare factory. Photo: Ian Birrell.

“The idea is for every person on the frontline to have a device like this — it’s an absolute necessity, like having a helmet or gun,” says Taras, the firm’s product manager. “If you go into the dead zone there might be hundreds, maybe thousands, of drones flying overhead. Yet when we talk about this being a drone war, it’s really a war of frequencies. It’s about finding the frequencies and evading the frequencies.”

This felt like a more familiar factory set-up with men and women clad in blue overalls, some making metal antennas but others operating 3D printers or peering through microscopes at intricate electronic parts. They seem driven by similar motivation. Sergii is a burly former builder from a devastated border region. “It’s more than just work for me,” he tells me, choked as he tells of his pride in helping his nation and friends in the military. “It is not like going to work and getting some money — I’m helping those who defend us.” Tetiana, who is using a magnifying glass to check circuit boards placed in drone detectors, only joined the firm earlier this month. For her, it is personal with a brother fighting and friends of her husband killed by the Russians: “I wanted to do something useful. I love my country, I want to live here and I don’t want to leave.”

The mood of resigned self-sufficiency amid turbulent geo-politics is striking. Such is the agile desperation of this nation caught in an existential fight for survival, that this firm produces its own batteries to reduce reliance on China. I am shown classified projects being built in case critical support from the United States is lost. This firm is even manufacturing unmanned ground vehicles — flat-bodied with tracks and cameras — for de-mining, ferrying supplies and evacuating wounded. The boundaries of military technology are being pushed constantly — as Taras tells me: “This is far superior to what would have been around even two years ago. Much of this didn’t even exist then.”

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Military procurement systems — infamously slow, bureaucratic, corrupt and profligate — must also innovate to survive when a nation is under such assault. Brave 1, the state agency that helped foster the birth of Buntar Aerospace, boasts of assisting 3,500 innovations from 1,500 “teams” since its own creation two years ago to respond fast to military needs. It collates demands from the frontline, then uses competitions and hackathons along with monetary grants to meet them. Such an approach is both disruptive and necessary in today’s theater of war. “The period of life for a military system used to be maybe 30 or 40 years but now it is sometimes just three or four weeks before it’s taken over by another technology,” says Oleh Donets, who coordinates their links with Ukraine’s armed forces.

Ukraine is effectively crowd-sourcing frontline information to survive. And this method of invention has yielded some unexpected results, such as the development of interceptor drones to shoot down other drones. “It was like a crazy idea — drones to counter drones,” says Donets. They began with an ambition to destroy the low-cost Iranian Shahed that are now being mass-produced in Russia and used to overwhelm Ukraine’s air defense systems. After about nine months of working with a close-knit group of companies, however, they ended up developing devices that proved far more effective against Moscow’s reconnaissance drones — and are now shooting down about 1,000 a month of them.

Inside a weapons factory. Photo: Ian Birrell.

At the start of this war, soldiers were tinkering with racing drones, adding explosives or grenades and then trying to drop them onto Russian positions. By 2023, it was reported that 10,000 drones were being destroyed monthly as both sides ramped up production. Last year, Ukraine produced 2.2 million, from basic drones flying short distances to aircraft flying deep into Russia to target arms dumps, munitions factories and oil refineries. President Zelensky recently claimed their engineers have designed a drone now with a range of 3,000 kilometers, which could hit even locations in Siberia.

Their biggest success, though, has been at sea, where a $250,000 craft loaded with 500 kilograms of explosives has shown it can sink a $300-million warship bristling with weapons. Kyiv’s maritime drones managed to defeat Russia’s Black Sea Fleet, pride of Moscow’s navy, forcing it to retreat from its Crimea base. They hit 17 air and sea targets, totally destroying 15 of them — striking five ships, six patrol vessels, two landing craft, two helicopters and, earlier this month, shooting down two SU-30 fighter jets using Sidewinder missiles. This was a step change in combat: the first time a surface drone brought down a combat aircraft.

These sea drones — which entered service only two years ago — have been devastatingly effective, causing Russian losses valued at half a billion dollars. And Ukraine is proud of them. Last week in Kyiv, Lieutenant-General Kyrylo Budanov, their head of military intelligence, joined members of his secretive Group 13 special forces team to display the all-new Magura (Maritime Autonomous Guard Unmanned Robotic Apparatus) craft. Four models were on display: a ship “killer” capable of swarm synchronization; a kamikaze vessel able to carry high loads of explosive; and two equipped with missiles and machine guns. One speaker at this slick event — which felt like the launch of a glitzy sports car, rather than a new robot army— hailed the arrival of “a modern fleet of the 21st century” while another described their success as akin to “the parable of David and Goliath.”

Members of Group 13 were there, faces masked by dark glasses and black balaclavas, and I ask them about striking enemy targets. “It’s like hunting — it is very difficult,” says Xena, a female member of the team. The team’s commander — known by his call sign Thirteenth — concedes that it had been challenging to create a new type of military vessel. “Previously, there was no such experience anywhere, there was no place to draw information,” he says. “These things completely change the philosophy of defense. They are changing the nature of warfare. No one was prepared for such a turn of events. Now many countries in the world, including Great Britain, are very quickly thinking how to reformat their fleets because they have turned out to be very vulnerable.”

Group 13 with Thirteenth at front and Xena on right. Photo: Ian Birrell.

Ukraine simply cannot afford to be complacent in this field of battle. Russia is also finding new ways to harness military innovation and has proved effective at scaling up production as it shifts from its traditional top-down, monolithic approach in an economy retooled around war. The Kremlin has even introduced “drone studies” into classrooms to help produce the next generation of developers. It has taken a lead also in using fiber-optics — with filaments up to 40 kilometers long — to avoid jamming, showing how advances can be creative adaptation of existing technologies rather than innovative breakthroughs. As one Kyiv source tells me, “We shouldn’t underestimate them. They are changing, everything is changing.”

The rest of the world is watching, although largely left playing catch-up. In the United States, tech start-ups are seeking to similarly disrupt the huge defense sector with the invention of autonomous weapons, drone swarming and artificial intelligence. China, too, is investing heavily in such futuristic technologies — and is preparing to launch a high-altitude drone mother ship that can release 100 kamikaze craft. But where does this leave Europe? There is concern in Ukraine that it is failing to see the true threat posed by the Kremlin even as warfare is being so drastically transformed. One analyst tells me about meeting the head of a next-door nation’s navy at an annual defense conference. “Each time I ask him how many drones he has and he says they have three. That was maybe fine when he said it in 2022 — but not in 2023, let alone in 2025.”

Europe simply cannot afford to remain wedded to the old military technologies such as battleships and tanks, suddenly so vulnerable, or it risks becoming dangerously left behind. As I am told by Vadym Adamov, a 21-year-old drone specialist, it is impossible to imagine doing almost any tasks today on the battlefield without them. “We evacuate with drones. We are mining with drones. We are shooting with drones. We do everything with them. The only limit is your creativeness on how to use them.”

Thirteenth, the commander of Group 13. Photo: Ian Birrell.

He believes this is a disruptive revolution in defense that bears comparison with the advent of the Guttenberg Press in the 15th century, “when words were taken from the hands of mighty people into the hands of ordinary people”. He points to a project he assists called Victory Drones, which has produced thousands of craft by teaching civilians how to make them. “In two weeks you can learn to assemble a drone with parts you buy yourself,” says Adamov. “You send it to the military and for $300, you’ve got a drone that can destroy a tank. Most of the stuff comes from China — it’s like Lego for adults.”

This young soldier, 10 years old when Russia invaded Crimea to start the war in Ukraine and a veteran of three years in combat, has little memory of living in a country without conflict. “So for me it is almost routine. You do not expect everyone to obey international laws — we see that if you have a big army you can go in, take what you want. There are no moral values in this new world. Now if Russia marches into Europe they will be really successful because they have learned all the lessons of modern warfare.”

He has a warning for us in Europe. “The first Russian rocket that hits your capital opens up a portal into a different world. When you find yourselves in this new world — and there’s more and more chance you will find yourselves here — you will be looking back at doing nothing for three years of the Ukrainian war. When I go to Europe and say to people I’m in the military, they say ‘Oh I’m so sorry’. But I say I’m sorry because we are on the verge of the Third World War and I should be sorry for you since you don’t know how to kill people with drones.”

Who knows if he is right in his fears about a Third World War? But his nation certainly bears the bloody scars of Russian aggression. And perhaps the ultimate irony is that one day soon we might end up looking for help from Ukraine in fighting to defend ourselves in the coming robotic techno-wars.

Additional reporting by Kate Hatsenko

The original intel estimate of 127,000 troops was grossly inadequate, and when it was raised to 150,000 including forces already within the Russian-held parts of eastern Ukraine, it was still much too low for a coup de main that would start and end the war in one go — the only kind of war that Russia can fight without quickly incurring dangerous levels of economic damage.

Of course, reckless gamblers are undeterred by risks, but Putin’s record until a week ago was that of a very patient hunter, who waits until the target walks into his sights, only then pressing the trigger for a sure hit. That is how he gained Abkhazia and South Ossetia from Georgia in 2008 after inter-ethnic fighting, and broken cease-fires since 1994. Both are small but significant territories — Abkhazia because it is the southernmost, most “Mediterranean” of all Russian-controlled territories, with oranges and lemons as well as a nominally independent government, and South Ossetia because it is an Orthodox enclave in the mostly Muslim Caucasus.

And that is also how Putin won his biggest prize so far, Crimea, detaching its several pieces from Ukraine in the turmoil following the Maidan uprising that sent President Viktor Yanukovych fleeing from Kyiv on 21 February 2014: a few thousand Russian operatives with some locals took over the territory of  Ukraine’s Autonomous Republic of Crimea, the autonomous city of Sevastopol, and a coastal strip in the Kherson mainland and all without firing a shot: a quickly concocted Republic of Crimea then “voted” to join the Russian Federation along with the city of Sevastopol.

To do the same thing across the 1500 kilometre width of Ukraine, it would take not less than half a million well-trained soldiers. They would need to move quickly overland to seize the cities nearest to the border such as Kharkov less than twenty miles away, or by large-airlift to reach distant Lviv, or helicoptered to simultaneously seize the regional capitals, from Lviv in the west to Kharkiv in the north-east, to Odessa in the south west, and Zaporizhia in the center-east, in addition to Kyiv, itself a metropolis of almost three million inhabitants. And yes, it all presumed only token resistance by such Ukrainian soldiers as would fight at all.

The once patient hunter turned reckless gambler persuaded himself of that, and of much more: that Ukraine’s Jewish ex-comedian turned President Zelensky would promptly flee, that his government would then collapse as ministers rushed off to escape arrest, that the Army, Navy, Air Force, and Air Defence, long starved of funds in any case would dissolve, so that Russian forces would advance unopposed to quickly seize every city, with Kyiv’s population obediently awaiting Russian rule. Then former president Yanukovych could be brought back to form a new government for the TV cameras, whose task would be to vote immediately to re-join the Russian Federation, thus ending the fighting in glorious victory for Putin and his empire.

None of the above was wildly improbable — but it hardly takes much in the way of prudence to eschew war planning that consists of stringing together best-case scenarios, which is exactly what Putin chose to do, ignoring his own Intelligence chief and veteran Kremlin official Sergey Naryshkin. That much is proven by a truly extraordinary document: the video of Putin’s eve-of-war meeting with his ministers and advisors, ostensibly on the annexation of the self-proclaimed independent Donbas republics, but actually on the imminent invasion.

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We see a carefully staged display of imperial authority that has Putin sitting high up at his desk while the advisers sit in chairs below him, till each one in turn goes to stand in front of a microphone to endorse what Putin has just said. But the script fell apart when it was Naryshkin’s turn to speak. He clearly said that there should be “talks” to give the Western side a “chance”, pronouncing that French word in the French way, as Russians do. Visibly surprised, visibly angered, Putin demands an answer “yes or no” on the annexation itself, sidestepping Naryshkin’s real point: to rely on talks, not tanks in dealing with Ukraine.

The build-up to the war went well for Putin. He had the German government firmly in his camp — to the improbable extent that it went far out of its way to prevent Estonia from donating old Soviet 122mm howitzers to Ukraine, on the flimsy ground that they had briefly been in German possession when the West German army inherited East Germany’s military equipment. Nor would the German government agree to suspend the certification of the giant new Nordstream 2 gas pipeline that would have increased German dependence on Russian gas, uncaring of the vehement objections of the United States, Britain, the European Council and Poland.

Given that, Germany was bound to rule out effective sanctions in the lead-up to the fighting, with the most effective — the exclusion from the Swift payment system — not even considered, because it would block payments for Russian gas, stopping its supply. A request for weapons from the immense German surplus stocks yielded an offer of old helmets, on the grounds that German parliamentarians would prohibit the supply of lethal weapons. Providing cover for the Germans, the Italian government also ruled out a Swift cut off, and it was only Italy’s embattled Defence Minister Lorenzo Guerini’s personal determination that kept the door half-open for Italian military supplies.

Nor was the US Government much of an obstacle: instead of emulating the British airlift of anti-tank missiles on a much larger scale, the US focused on evacuating its diplomats in hysterical haste — as if to support Putin’s intimidation campaign — and then failed to airlift any of the tens of thousands of highly suitable “point and shoot” anti-tank rockets in Army depots that any civilian can use with one minute of training.

But war is the greatest contingency. As all veterans know — and that includes the present writer — until the fighting starts, no soldier knows how he will react to combat, and still less which of his comrades will fight bravely and which will keep his head down, waiting for the noise to end. And that goes for war leaders too: in 1939 the mediocre dictator Ioannis Metaxas replied to Mussolini’s verbose ultimatum with a monosyllabic ohi — “no” — inspiring victorious fighting by the hugely outgunned Greeks. And now in 2022 Zelensky’s comedic turn as a TV President, followed by a respectable showing as an actual President, set the stage for his current act as an indomitable war leader, totally uncaring of the risk to his own life as the number one target of Russian under-cover killer teams.

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After refusing Biden’s ill-judged offer to evacuate him (he asked for weapons instead) Zelensky declared that he would remain in Kyiv with his entire Cabinet to lead the fight for the city. That played its own undefinable role in inspiring Ukraine’s soldiers to resist no matter what: to hold the city of Kharkiv, close enough to the Russian border to have been within artillery range from the start, to defend Zmiinyi (snake) island in front of coastal Odessa, whose 13-man garrison came under overwhelming naval bombardment after impolitely refusing to surrender, to defend Mariupol the country’s eastern harbour, whose half a million inhabitants live less than 30 miles from the Russian border (but are holding out with the Russians still 15 miles away as of this writing), and on the Kyiv approaches through which the Russian army was supposed to swiftly advance on the city and finish the war in two days if not one.

The Ukrainian army did not run away, it did not surrender, it did not abandon its weapons to walk home, and neither was it quickly outmanoeuvred by the much better-funded Russian army, which has had the fuel, ammo, and replacement parts for much more intensive training than the badly underfunded Ukrainians. It turns out that motivation beats even training: Russian armoured columns that were supposed to advance at motor speed on the highways to Kharkov and Kyiv brushing aside token resistance to quickly seize both cities, were instead forced off the road by sustained Ukrainian anti-armour fire, and then blocked again by hard fighting when they gave up on highway momentum to advance cross-country at 3mph. Day after day, Kharkov and Kyiv not only held out but were not even attacked, except by a few missiles, more terrifying than destructive.

That is when Putin’s timetable and entire war plan fell apart.

The world could close its eyes for a day and a night to allow the Russians to finish the job, so as to continue business as usual for everyone: the trucks delivering French and Italian luxury goods to the Moscow bourgeoisie along with Audi and Mercedes cars, Dutch hydroponic vegetables and much more from Frankfurt an Oder via Warsaw and Minsk; the aircraft bringing Russian skiers to Courchevel and Megève, and shoppers to London and Paris.

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But when the Russian attempt failed, and the dramatic news was made by Ukraine’s heroic resistance rather than by the expected Putin victory, Western Europeans had to open their eyes, they had to look at the Russian aggression that had brought large-war to Europe for the first time since 1945.

After Italy’s Draghi spoke with Zelensky, Italy’s objection to the Swift ban suddenly gave way to approval, forcing the Germans to switch also to avoid opprobrium as the only hold-out. With that the silent opponents like Luxembourg also had to go along, and soon enough Japan also agreed to exclude the most regime-connected banks. With that the destruction of the Russian bourgeoisie’s way of life was underway in earnest: no skiing trips to France, or foreign trips anywhere outside the Russian sphere, no sending of children to expensive boarding schools in Britain or Switzerland, no new German cars, nor fresh tomatoes.

Concurrently, the spectacle of civilians, ladies of advanced years included, preparing Molotov cocktails out of beer bottles as a last resort to defend their streets, broke down the dam of Pacifist hypocrisy (“weapons only make war worse”) releasing an expanding torrent of weapons, with Germany, last seen stopping others from helping, itself offering 5,000 Stingers, aspirational anti-aircraft weapons against jets, but deadly against helicopters. Italy is sending badly needed anti-tank weapons, and others such as the British who did not wait for the fighting to begin in order to send anti-tank missiles, are sending more weapons as the US, Canada, Sweden and others are also doing, but adding a so far unique official encouragement of volunteers willing to fight for Ukraine.

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Suddenly the hitherto untouchable Putin is in trouble. He promised a quick, almost effortless victory, to instead plunge into a war increasingly costly of lives (hundreds of Russians are dead by all accounts), increasingly costly for the entire Russian economy, and disastrous for its bourgeoisie. And this for a war that Russia is not winning. That Putin has invited the Ukrainian President to send envoys to cease-fire talks is itself a tremendous defeat for him: he had insisted that he could not negotiate at all with the“drug addicts and Neo-Nazis” of Zelensky’s government, but now he must negotiate, to extricate himself from the war he deliberately started, whose costs have risen phenomenally.

If talks do start, the Ukrainians can have only one demand: an immediate and total withdrawal of Russian forces to their starting positions. And if the Russians accept that inevitable demand, it seems unlikely that Putin can remain in power, not after having overruled his Intelligence chief, to deliberately start a costly war, only to lose it.

If the Russians refuse, they must revert to a very hard fight, a slow-motion drive into Kyiv that will be marked by rising casualties, as Ukrainian resistance is strengthened by the influx of better weapons and rising military competence. Then the Russians must conquer the whole of Ukraine out to Lviv and the Carpathian mountains — where the population is mostly anti-Russian, promising ever more grinding combat.

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It is hard to imagine how Putin could emerge from this scenario victorious. Yes Zelensky might be reached and murdered at any time, but it seems entirely unlikely that the morale generated by the ferocious resistance he inspired would simply disappear — if anything it might well increase.

Another possibility is nuclear escalation, and Putin’s latest is indeed to talk up in his most ominous tones Russia’s forward-deployed nuclear weapons.

Unfortunately for Putin, the action is now in the hands of old ladies with Molotov cocktails, shoe salesmen with bazookas, and increasingly experienced street fighters. None of them are likely to pause this fight for fear of Russian nuclear escalation.

That leaves Putin with no way of redeeming his promise of a swiftly victorious war, no defence against the accusation of having grievously damaged Russia and humiliated its army. The spy chief Naryshkin in the Kremlin might be the one to remove Putin with the least disruption, but of course there are other Putin appointees also ready to save mother Russia.