The West Cannot Forget About Ukraine

So the West must change itself: it does not have the responsibility, the capacity or the desire to force Putin to change. Putin is not being told to live with Ukraine. But a Russian ‘sphere of influence’ is not a recipe for peace or stability. Too many Ukrainians would resist it; both for patriotic reasons and for the renewed corruption and loss of European perspective it would bring. And Russia wouldn’t understand why it was resisted and resented; because it doesn’t understand the animus of a new nation-state in the making, which has been the underlying force of the revolution in Ukraine since 2013. The Kremlin would assume that any acts of rebellion were being covertly supported by the West. So we would be back to confrontation. The problem could not be quietly consigned to a remoter part of Europe.