Come with me into the ochre mud of the churchyard in Bucha, past the bullet-riddled church of St Andrew.
Stand over the graves of some of the 416 inhabitants of this town – nine of them children – who were shot by the Russians in an attempt to terrify the rest.
Look at the photos of their corpses, their hands tied behind their backs, left in the street to rot or to be eaten by dogs. Stand with me by the blackened remains of an apartment block in Borodyanka, the twisted plumbing and smashed children’s toys.
Look at what just one of Vladimir Putin’s 500kg airborne bombs can do to an eight-storey building.
Try to meet the pleading eyes of the people who pulled 162 corpses from the rubble, and who searched for the 28 whose remains were never found. Look at those brave Ukrainians and answer me this question: just what the hell are we waiting for?
BONUS VIDEO: U.S. GENERAL: RUSSIA'S MASSIVE DEATHS IN UKRAINE ARE ABSOLUTE CATASTROPHE
What happened here in the suburbs of Kyiv was sickening. But it is happening in every part of Ukraine that Putin continues to occupy: torture, rape, mass murder.
Though the physical destruction here is awful, it pales beside the crimes that Putin is committing in other parts of the country – flattening entire townships in a typhoon of
bombs and missiles. He has no restraint. He has no scruple. He has long since abandoned the slightest respect for the laws of war – and with every day that goes by, more innocents are sacrificed, more brave Ukrainian soldiers are killed and more young Russians are fed into the maw of his meat-grinder.
So let me pose the question again. What conceivable grounds can there be for delay? Why are we not giving the Ukrainians all the help that they need, now, when they need it?
Let us be in no doubt. Ukraine is winning and will win this war. Ukrainian hearts are high and their determination is hardening every day.
Drive around the outskirts of Kyiv, and you will see how ferociously they fought to protect their hearths and homes, and how ludicrously Putin misunderstood his enemy.
You see innumerable buildings, crumpled and scarred by Russian tank fire. You see how the tracks of those tanks have ribbed the tarmac of the roads.
You also see the bivouacs and foxholes in the woods, camouflaged with rags, from which the Ukrainians fearlessly ambushed those Russian tanks – blowing them up with shoulderlaunched missiles, many of them made in Belfast.
You see where they routed what was supposed to be the most formidable army in the world. The Ukrainian expulsion of Russian troops from Kyiv will go down as one of the great feats of arms of modern times. They did it again in Kharkiv, and again in Kherson.
They can, and will, drive Putin out of the whole of Ukraine. This is now a war of independence, and history teaches us that wars of independence only end one way. The question is when.
The sooner we can help the Ukrainians to their inevitable victory, the sooner their suffering will be over, and the sooner the whole world, including Russia, can begin to recover from Putin’s catastrophe. That requires all of us in the West, all the friends of Ukraine, to double and treble our support. Putin’s troops are demoralised. They are short of good ammunition.
His army consists of freshly sprung convicts, or scared members of ethnic minorities dragooned to fight from anonymous cities in the furthest reaches of Russia.
But wasteful though he is, Putin still has the reserves of population; he has the power to conscript; and he has shown his total contempt for the value of human life.
He is now preparing a counterpunch. And even if the Ukrainians can see it coming, and will easily absorb that punch, they will need our help for that next and decisive phase – taking back the land bridge. This is continuous strip of conquered land that runs along the coast from the Donbas to Crimea, and which currently blocks Ukrainian access to the Sea of Azov.
If they can take back that land bridge, or drive their way through it and cut it in two, the Ukrainians have won. It is game over for Putin.
All they need to do it is the kind of kit the West has in abundance, and which right now could have no higher moral or strategic purpose than to help Ukraine.
They need ‘deep fires’ – longerrange artillery that can take out Putin’s positions from afar. At present, they can see what he is doing on Ukrainian soil. They can discern his command centres and ammo dumps. To their immense frustration, they cannot hit those targets with the systems they have. They need planes to strike those positions from the air, and they need armoured cars and tanks to recapture and hold the ground that Putin has stolen.
I am proud that it is the UK that is once again making the running. By sending 14 Challenger 2 tanks, our Defence Secretary Ben Wallace has set an example for other countries to emulate. Now is the time for others to follow our lead.
The Ukrainians need hundreds of tanks, and they should be getting them from the Americans, the Germans, the Poles, and many others.
His army consists of freshly sprung convicts, or scared members of ethnic minorities dragooned to fight from anonymous cities in the furthest reaches of Russia.
But wasteful though he is, Putin still has the reserves of population; he has the power to conscript; and he has shown his total contempt for the value of human life.
He is now preparing a counterpunch. And even if the Ukrainians can see it coming, and will easily absorb that punch, they will need our help for that next and decisive phase – taking back the land bridge. This is continuous strip of conquered land that runs along the coast from the Donbas to Crimea, and which currently blocks Ukrainian access to the Sea of Azov.
If they can take back that land bridge, or drive their way through it and cut it in two, the Ukrainians have won. It is game over for Putin.
All they need to do it is the kind of kit the West has in abundance, and which right now could have no higher moral or strategic purpose than to help Ukraine.
They need ‘deep fires’ – longerrange artillery that can take out Putin’s positions from afar. At present, they can see what he is doing on Ukrainian soil. They can discern his command centres and ammo dumps. To their immense frustration, they cannot hit those targets with the systems they have. They need planes to strike those positions from the air, and they need armoured cars and tanks to recapture and hold the ground that Putin has stolen.
I am proud that it is the UK that is once again making the running. By sending 14 Challenger 2 tanks, our Defence Secretary Ben Wallace has set an example for other countries to emulate. Now is the time for others to follow our lead.
The Ukrainians need hundreds of tanks, and they should be getting them from the Americans, the Germans, the Poles, and many others.
BONUS VIDEO: 23 Jan: REALITY HIT RUSSIANS IN THE FACE | War in Ukraine Explained
Where does the Western world need to station those tanks at the moment?
Guarding North Rhine-Westphalia? Protecting Tennessee? Prowling the villages of Wiltshire? The same point can be made about every item of conventional weaponry that could help Ukraine bring this agony to an end.
Don’t talk to me about ‘escalation’, or the risk that we will somehow provoke Putin, by increasing our support, to some fresh horror.
Why should we fear to provoke him, when he has already shown what he will do without the slightest provocation?
How can he ‘escalate’, when he has already reached such a pitch of barbarism that he is systematically pulverising the homes of civilians?
Will he escalate with a battlefield nuclear weapon? Really? I don’t believe it for a second. If Putin were so insane as to go nuclear, he would in a trice lose all the world’s swing voters – from Africa, the Middle East, Asia – who are currently willing to cut him so much slack.
Worse, from his point of view, he would lose the Chinese. He would become a global pariah, and plunge Russia into such a state of cryogenic economic exclusion as to make the current sanctions look moderate.
Above all, he would lose the Russian people, who would be utterly terrified about the conthat
‘I’m proud that the UK is once again making the running’
Those heroic people are fighting for anyone who might be threatened by Putin’s crazed revanchism and neo-imperialism. They are fighting for the principle that nations should not have their borders changed by force. When Ukraine wins, that is a message that will be heard around the world
sequences of such a move, and where it might lead. And it wouldn’t even work. It wouldn’t stop the Ukrainians fighting.
He won’t do it. He wants to make us talk about nuclear weapons, because he wants to portray his war of choice as a stand- off between Nato and Russia. It is no such thing. It is a brutal and unprovoked attack on a blameless European country, and all Ukraine’s friends are doing is to help that country defend itself.
We cannot be blamed for the geostrategic disaster that Putin has brought upon himself. He has managed by his violence and aggression not only to cause Finland and Sweden to join Nato; he has eloquently destroyed any case against the Nato membership of the Ukrainians themselves.
What is the result of our decadeslong failure to live up to our promise, and admit the Ukrainians to the shelter of the Nato defensive umbrella?
The result is the bloodiest war in Europe for 80 years. For the sake of clarity and stability and longterm peace, it is now clear – which it wasn’t before Putin’s invasion – that Ukraine must join.
And yes, I accept that when Putin eventually and inevitably loses, it will be difficult to explain it all to the Russian public. But he will find a way. He controls the organs of opinion. He still has very substantial support.
It is not our job to worry about Putin, or where his career might go next, or to engage in pointless Kremlinology. Our job is to help Ukraine win – as fast as possible. Those heroic people are fighting for all of us. The Ukrainians are fighting for the Georgians, for the Moldovans, for the Baltic states, for the Poles – for anyone who might in due time be threatened by Putin’s crazed revanchism and neo-imperialism. They are fighting for the principle that nations should not have their borders changed by force.
When Ukraine wins, that is a message that will be heard around the world. So let us help them win, not next year or the year after, but this year, 2023; and don’t talk to me, finally, about expense.
If you want to minimise the world’s economic pain, if you want to avoid the enormous cost – in blood and treasure – of letting this tragedy stretch on, then let’s together do the obvious thing.
Let’s give the Ukrainians all they need to win now.
WHEN Russian tanks rolled into Ukraine exactly 11 months ago, most of the world expected only one outcome.
HORRIBLE (Jan 24) Ukraine troops intercept and destroyed 32 army Russian Wagner Group in Bakhmut
President Volodymyr Zelensky’s forces would be routed in the face of a vastly superior enemy. Moscow would install a puppet government in Kyiv. And the West, addicted to Russian oil and gas, would wring its hands and look the other way.
How wrong those predictions turned out to be. Thanks to the stirring courage of its troops and the help of Nato – galvanised into action by Boris Johnson – Ukraine has defied Vladimir Putin’s invasion.
Indeed it is now on the offensive and recapturing ground conceded in the early part of the campaign. But its heroism has come at a terrible cost.
Russia’s pitiless barbarism summons up the ghastly shades of both world wars.
Massacre, torture and rape are once again deployed as weapons of mass terror. On parts of the front line, the conflict has descended into trench warfare, with soldiers on both sides living ankle-deep in cloying mud.
This bloody war has had consequences across the globe. Energy and food prices have soared, leading to an inflation spike which has devastated the world economy.
But while everyone prays for a speedy solution, it must be just. The West must not succumb to fatigue and allow Putin to succeed in his brutal expansionism.
If Ukraine were to fall, he would soon be eyeing up the Baltic states, as part of his stated ambition to reconstitute the Soviet Union. China, too, would be emboldened in its hostile claim to Taiwan and despots around the world would celebrate.
BONUS VIDEO: Ukrainian Troops drone destroy Three Russian Tanks And 30 Enemy Soldiers In Zaporizhzhia
Mr Johnson’s visit to Kyiv was not just a gesture of support but also a reminder to Nato and the EU of their moral obligations to this imperilled democracy.
In an evocative and hugely powerful piece for today’s Mail, he describes witnessing chilling evidence of Russian atrocities. It’s hard to read but drives home his point.
‘ With every day that goes by, more innocents are sacrificed, more brave Ukrainian soldiers are killed,’ he writes.
‘What conceivable grounds can there be for delay? Why are we not giving the Ukrainians all the help they need, now, when they need it?’
Germany must authorise the tank deliveries it has been vacillating over and other allies must provide the technology and materiel Ukraine is pleading for.
This is nothing less than a fight for freedom and democracy. Mr Johnson understands that, and so should the whole of the civilised world. Tyranny cannot be allowed to prevail.
In an evocative and hugely powerful piece for today’s Mail, he describes witnessing chilling evidence of Russian atrocities. It’s hard to read but drives home his point.
‘ With every day that goes by, more innocents are sacrificed, more brave Ukrainian soldiers are killed,’ he writes.
‘What conceivable grounds can there be for delay? Why are we not giving the Ukrainians all the help they need, now, when they need it?’
Germany must authorise the tank deliveries it has been vacillating over and other allies must provide the technology and materiel Ukraine is pleading for.
This is nothing less than a fight for freedom and democracy. Mr Johnson understands that, and so should the whole of the civilised world. Tyranny cannot be allowed to prevail.
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