When Joe Biden and Vladimir Putin spoke in Warsaw and Moscow on Tuesday, the gulf between Russia and the west and its allies stretched a little further. Yet at the heart of two starkly different speeches lay a shared assumption: that this war will not end soon.
The Russian president assumed it would be over in days when he launched his brutal full-scale invasion of Ukraine a year ago on Friday. He was hardly alone. The courage and resolve of Ukrainians, and the rush of support from the west and its allies, were remarkable. Each day that Ukraine fended off defeat counted as a victory. Yet the parameters have shifted. In a war of attrition, time is usually on the aggressor’s side. Millions have been forced to flee their country. More than 7,000 civilians have died, hundreds of them children, and the US estimates that there have been well over 100,000 Ukrainian military casualties. The economy and critical infrastructure are devastated and key resources lie under Russian control. Each Russian war crime has reinforced the Ukrainian understanding that this is an existential struggle, and the fear that a negotiated settlement at this stage would simply be an opportunity for Mr Putin to restock and prepare for a renewed assault.
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