Putin’s Russia is not invincible, Europe can help Ukraine resist - Yorkshire Post Letters
From: Paul Andrews, Great Habton.
Reading Patrick Mercer’s article on Ukraine in your Saturday issue, I am reminded of the chief Dalek’s famous lines from Dr Who: “Resistance is futile. Surrender or you will be exterminated.”
He points to the size of our armed forces and suggests that, because of the depleted state of the army since the end of the Cold War, they would be ineffective to oppose the Russian behemoth.
Fortunately, this is not the whole story. It is true that Russia has an enormous army, but this is disproportionate to the size of its economy. Putin’s Russia is not the world’s richest country. In terms of GDP, it has the world’s 11th largest economy – an economy which, in terms of GDP, is smaller than the UK economy which has the sixth largest economy, or Germany (the third largest) or France (the seventh largest). It follows that economically Putin’s Russia is infinitely less powerful than the combined power of Western Europe.
Putin’s political philosophy may seem to be that people owe their existence to the state and should be willing to pay for this by personal sacrifice on the battlefield rather than the state being in existence to serve its citizens, but this does not make Putin’s Russia invincible.
Militarily Ukraine has been able to resist and defeat Putin’s huge army and destroy its navy. This has not stopped Putin pressing on with a determination to overwhelm Ukraine’s defences by sheer weight of numbers and attrition.
Nobody is suggesting that the European countries take over the war from Ukraine or that the UK should act unilaterally. However, if the combined armies of UK, Germany, France and Poland were to send reinforcements to the Ukraine army (with or without American support), it is difficult to see how Putin could win a conventional war.
Putin is no fool. According to some accounts, he’s already told President Trump to stop interfering so that he can ‘finish off’ the Ukrainian army. We know he won’t stop unless he has to. He’s not mad enough to risk a nuclear confrontation and if there was a determined and united resolve from European countries, he is more than likely to give serious consideration to a peaceful settlement.
If Patrick Mercer wants peace in Ukraine, he should be applauding Keir Starmer for taking the initiative instead of mocking him for “playing soldiers”.