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Join today<\/a><\/p>\n \n Already a member? A grim, expensive, choice faces Europe<\/a> and the United Kingdom<\/a>. Take on Russia<\/a> in Ukraine<\/a> or wait for the fight to come into our homes. Prepping for Armageddon by stockpiling tins of rice pudding<\/a>, water and wind-up radios will mean nothing if the fight is not taken to the enemy<\/a>.<\/p>\n Ukraine has proved this. And the suffering being endured across the country<\/a> as the Trump administration has sabotaged Kyiv\u2019s weapons systems shows how far Vladimir Putin<\/a> will go to achieve his ends \u2013 a nihilistic fetish for chaos among his rivals.<\/p>\n As Wes Streeting, the defence secretary, said this week<\/a>: \u201cTerms like hybrid warfare and grey zone threats do not accurately capture or convey to the general public what I prefer to describe as state-sponsored terrorism.<\/p>\n \u201cSo in the face of those threats, which are not hypothetical but real, and not somewhere else but increasingly here, we have to step up and take seriously our national resilience as well as our national defence.\u201d<\/p>\n In real muscular terms, and in the very short term, \u201cnational defence\u201d should include the consideration of deploying Nato<\/a> forces into Ukraine to protect its civilian population. <\/p>\n Existing anti-missile systems have been mostly exhausted. Ukraine\u2019s energy infrastructure and civilian population, its train networks, heavy industry and data centres are all being targeted with the intent to break the will of the nation so that it will cave in to Russian demands and sue for peace.<\/p>\n A ceasefire or even peace deal that freezes the front lines where they are might look good for Ukraine, but it will be catastrophic for the West. <\/p>\n Russia will use a window of peace to rearm, retrain, and re-equip forces that are the second most proficient in the use of modern weapons on Earth. State-sponsored Russian interference and terrorism will continue.<\/p>\n Western democracies, already trying to cope with the crumbling economic aftermath of neoliberal economics and populations equally unrealistic about what free services they are \u201cowed\u201d by their states, will be unable to resist the Kremlin\u2019s destablisation campaign.<\/p>\n This isn\u2019t hyperbole, this is the reality that will unfold because the West isn\u2019t prepared to invest in protecting the freedoms and democracy that Vladimir Putin wants to destroy in Ukraine and beyond.<\/p>\n There\u2019s no case for going to war. There is a strong case for the \u201cbelow the threshold\u201d war or conflict that Russia is already prosecuting.<\/p>\n Nato can, and arguably should, get involved in very aggressive defence of Ukraine. Not because we are morally outraged by Russia\u2019s murder of toddlers and children, or its massacre and hunting safaris against the elderly on the streets, but because it is in the interests of the West to do so.<\/p>\n Justin Bronk, an aviation expert at the Royal United Services Institute<\/a> has taken a look at what could be done to protect Ukraine against Geran jet-powered missiles or drones. These are the old Shaheds but capable of flying at up to 500 kmph carrying a warhead of around 90kg, painted in black and often launched in swarms.<\/p>\n \u201cA dedicated multinational Nato squadron of armed jet trainers could shoot down Russian drone incursions without burning through frontline fighters and scarce air-to-air missiles,\u201d Bronk writes in a recent paper for Rusi, the military establishment\u2019s think tank.<\/p>\n Ukrainian jets have shot down drones including Gerans and even ballistic missiles. The 11th Separate Army Aviation Brigade recently posted a video of a rear gunner, leaning out of the back seat of a Yak-52 propeller plane, to shoot down a Russian drone in flight.<\/p>\n Bronk argues that Nato could deploy small jet training aircraft with two seats, one for the gunner or weapons officer, to bring down Gerans and other missiles and drones, in a new anti-drone squadron.<\/p>\n Tasked with only defending Ukraine but legally able to protect itself, with say advanced Nato fighter jets like F-35 and Typhoon, a Nato squadron could plug the gap in Ukraine\u2019s air defences and send a message to Putin that \u201cwe see see you and we raise you\u201d.<\/p>\n Nato, without the US, easily outmatches Russia\u2019s military capacity. Its full force is being held back by a small nation of only 40 million.<\/p>\n Nato, without the US, has almost twice as many aircraft in every category, as Russia. It has a bigger navy by 4.5 times and almost twice as many submarines. <\/p>\n Russia does not appear to be afraid of being attacked by nuclear weapons, which Putin and his flunkies have threatened to use against Nato countries or Ukraine. The Kremlin is unmoved by a nuclear threat from non-US Nato \u2013 perhaps because Russia has eight times as many nukes.<\/p>\n But also because the Kremlin understands the insanity of MAD, Mutually Assured Destruction. Putin knows that the West is never likely to drop The Bomb.<\/p>\n Current evidence, though, is that places like the UK<\/a> are preparing for cyber attacks and other mayhem by hoarding baked beans and loo paper.<\/p>\n
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Vladimir Putin greets US special envoy Steve Witkoff in St Petersburg on 21 October 2026 (AFP\/Getty)<\/p>\nAn image distributed by Romania\u2019s Ministry of Defence shows a missile being fired at jet-powered Geran drones that entered the country\u2019s airspace on 18 October (AP)<\/p>\n
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Spanish Air Force F-18 fighter jets fly over Lithuania during a Nato media tour on 30 September (Reuters)<\/p>\n
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A Russian Geran 2 kamikaze drone flies near a building in Ukraine (Reuters)<\/p>\n