Keir Starmer has quietly retreated from his grand promises of support for Ukraine: Patrick Mercer

Now, Russia could force that to happen should the USA, Britain and Europe remove their support, but the Allies have reached a crossroads and must now decide for how long that support will last and at what cost.

The conditional promises and half truths which have been made to Kyiv are pretty bleak. First, America’s linchpin of support has almost been pulled out. Amongst the confusing rhetoric from a variety of Washington officials, it seems clear that Mr Trump is rapidly tiring of the whole mess; he’s already once suspended the vital buttress of intelligence material and now the supply of hardware is dwindling.

It seems clear that America is about to pass the responsibility of Ukraine - like a shrieking baby - over to the ‘Coalition of the Willing’, led by the stalwarts of France, Germany and UK.

President Macron seems to have been slapped down, but it’s Britain’s conduct that stands out as a beacon of hypocrisy. A few months ago Whitehall signed a ‘100 Year Partnership’ with Kyiv demonstrating ‘unbreakable bonds’ between the two countries - then reality bit.

Despite his braggadocio, Sir Keir quickly withdrew any suggestion that British troops should get involved in Ukraine once his defence secretary told him that what few soldiers he had weren’t fit for purpose.

Following that, his much trumpeted additional defence spending amounted to no more than a lick of paint for our tiny fleet. Then it became clear that the forthcoming defence review would recommend further cuts to manpower and equipment.

Despite the bogus Starmer/Macron combo, something very interesting is emerging in the Coalition’s ranks in the unlikely shape of Freidrich Merz. The term Chancellor of Germany conjures up all sorts of rather worrying images although the new incumbent’s thick spectacles and wheezy sentences are hardly Bismarkian; nevertheless, he’s rattling his sabre like an old hand.

During the recent negotiations in Turkey and elsewhere, Russia has delivered three of its heaviest missile and drone assaults including eight of the largest strikes of the war since January 2025. Interestingly, one of the most damaging concentrations has been against strategic airfields in western Ukraine where it’s believed that the latest tranche of Dutch F16 fighter/bombers are already arriving.

In reply, Kyiv launched an unprecedented shoal of drones and rockets, many of which were aimed at Moscow, but all of which would have seriously depleted Mr Putin’s stocks of air defence weapons.

Enter Herr Merz. No sooner had the last drone burst on Mother Russia than he gave us something as spicy as a currywurst: all restrictions on the use of US and NATO long range missiles by Ukraine would be lifted. Now this is very much at odds with his predecessor. Olaf Scholz was quite clear that he wouldn’t allow Taurus missiles to be used against Russia because they relied not only upon NATO satellite guidance, but also involved a small number of German technical troops to fire them. The same applies to British, American, French and other western supplied missiles and was seen until recently by Bonn as being dangerously escalatory.

Now join the dots. Holland has provided additional F16’s; there will be more drone attacks by Ukraine; Russia’s air defence ammunition stocks will be written down even further; then Moscow and other strategic sites will be unusually vulnerable just as NATO allows Ukraine a free hand in using far reaching missiles like Taurus for the first time.

It sounds like an all out, thinly veiled Coalition attack which might be just the thing to jolt the Kremlin back to the negotiating table. Or will it?

Western media usually depicts Russia’s diplomats as brutish and crude - and many are. Yet, last November the Kremlin identified the probability of a concerted attack on Russian soil using long range NATO weapons fired by (some) NATO troops and directed by NATO satellites. As a result, Russian nuclear doctrine was changed; it now allows such weapons to be used in response to ‘strategically imperilling’ assaults by conventional forces.

The reference to nuclear weapons is deliberately misleading, though: Moscow no more wants a Chernobyl-like wasteland than the West does, yet both sides fully grasp the enormity of the threat. Many experts would say that nuclear weapons have had their day, but the utter finality of what they can do still serves to make everyone pause and reconsider.

But, there’s now an alternative way for Russia to deter her enemies and this was demonstrated just a few days after the doctrinal change. Russia used an intermediate range ballistic missile - Oreshnik - for the first time on the battlefield, a projectile which is so fast that - as yet - there is no defence against it. Although it carried no warheads, this hypersonic weapon devastated a bunker target in Kherson demonstrating what might be unleashed in the future.

From the optimism of just a few weeks ago when it seemed that the supremely powerful - and experienced - US president might bang heads together on both sides of the Slavic divide, we’re now back to despair.

I hope that Chancellor Merz knows the risks of his jingoism and is prepared to accept the consequences.

Patrick Mercer is a former MP for Newark and Army colonel.