President Donald Trump said of Sir Keir Starmer this week that “this is not Winston Churchill that we’re dealing with”.
It is a pity that the president has always tragically failed to recognise that he has already met and dealt with someone who has inherited the mantle of that old lion: Volodymyr Zelensky.
Like the hero of Britain’s finest hour, President Zelensky inspires in his own people the same indomitable spirit of defiance that Churchill did during the disasters and setbacks of the earlier phases of the Second World War.
One day, perhaps some future US president will place a fine bust of Mr Zelensky in the Oval Office as partial repentance for Mr Trump’s shameful treatment of him – and as a standing rebuke to all those who would appease a tyrant such as Vladimir Putin.
For obvious reasons, President Zelensky’s interview with The Independent should remind Europeans in particular that a far more imminent threat to Western security than Iran is still crawling its way through the Donbas.
The ultimate objective of Russia’s forces is still to extinguish both the very existence of the Ukrainian state and the identity of the Ukrainian people. Yet the Kremlin also has the unspoken, longer-term aim of restoring Russia’s dominance of Eastern Europe at a minimum, and ideally the entire continent.
That has always been a powerful reason to support Ukraine, and that is why they are fighting a war for Europe as well as for their own independence. That America has disengaged so much from this struggle and betrayed Ukraine is the great tragedy of this decade.
With that in mind, President Zelensky’s warnings must be heeded, even as attention is drawn once again to a crisis in the Middle East.
Indeed, he is right to highlight the consequences for the war in Ukraine of the conflagration now unfolding in the Gulf. What has happened is not good news for Ukraine and its European friends. “Our estimation, of course, is that air defence [for Ukraine] could decrease,” says Mr Zelensky, and there are indications even now from President Trump himself that supplies of certain munitions are running low.
America, a little ironically, is now seeing at first hand how difficult it is to counter highly effective and inexpensive unmanned aircraft – the very same design of Shahed drones that have caused so much destruction and suffering to civilian targets in Ukraine over the past four years.
Such has been the Ukrainian expertise in countering and then pioneering drone warfare that Mr Zelensky has reportedly dispatched teams of his experts to assist the Americans and Gulf states in their conflict with the Iranians. Even a man so purblind to geopolitical realities as Mr Trump should be able to discern the strong links between Moscow and Tehran. It is not a coincidence.
If a shortage of American-supplied anti-missile defences, more or less willingly paid for by European allies, worries President Zelensky in the short term, he is also right to be concerned about what the Iran war is doing to the price of oil and gas in the medium term.
If the war goes on and the spike in the value of hydrocarbons persists, then President Putin’s biggest strategic weakness – the Russian economy – will rapidly disappear. Regrettably, China and India continue to be ready export markets (sometimes covertly) for Russian hydrocarbons, and this obviously helps finance the Russian war machine.
Mr Zelensky suggests, albeit obliquely, that America and Europe step up their attempts to interrupt “informal” Russian sales of oil via its shadowy “grey fleet” of often ageing, unsafe tankers navigating without signals or identification: “We have to work on ... sanctions, on shadow fleets, to stop tankers with Russian oil.”
Even now, Europe remains a substantial importer of Russian natural gas, and some member states, notably Hungary, operate as virtual Kremlin proxies in the councils of Brussels.
Like so many of his people, President Zelensky is tired and misses a normal family life, but remains unbowed. As has been the case for many years, going back to the original invasion and Russian annexation of Crimea in 2014, Ukraine has had to fall back on its own resources and ingenuity, so much so that it has the largest and probably most effective army in Europe, with a formidable home armaments industry behind it.
Despite American indifference and the unrelenting Russian meat grinder, Ukraine has not lost this war, and there is no reason why it should. But victory is elusive, as is a ceasefire on realistic terms. The war in Iran has almost inadvertently created fresh challenges for President Zelensky and his nation, and tipped the balance of advantage towards Russia.
That is all the more reason for Europe to back him. The injunction to European leaders from President Zelensky is plain. It is, in the ringing words of Winston Churchill, to give Ukraine the tools, and they will finish the job.
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