The smoke has barely cleared over Kyiv. Once again, Russian missiles have carved new craters into the streets of this ancient city, leaving what the Ukrainian president has described as ‘shattered souls’ in their wake. The British government, quick to issue its ritualised condemnation, has duly labelled Putin’s campaign a ‘terror strategy’. But let us pause – not to diminish the horror, but to place it in the longer bloody arc of history.
We are told this is a war of choice, an act of naked aggression. And so it is. But we also delude ourselves if we think this is merely the madness of one man. The fall of Rome was not the work of a single barbarian chieftain; it was the culmination of decades of decadence, decay, and a loss of faith in the very idea of the imperium. Look at our own societies: obsessed with comfort, saturated in irony, incapable of sacrifice. We tut at the news, share a hashtag, and return to our Netflix. We have outsourced our courage to the brave souls in Kyiv, and they are paying the price in blood.
To grasp the meaning of this moment, we must strip away the pieties. The West’s response has been a masterclass in theatre: sanctions that bite slowly, weapons delivered in grudging increments, and speeches full of Churchillian echoes but devoid of Churchillian substance. Meanwhile, Putin calculates. He knows that democratic publics tire of war before autocrats do. He knows that the memory of the Syrian desolation fades, that the images of Bucha will eventually become screensavers for the morally exhausted. So he waits, and he strikes, and he waits again.
The Russian tactic is not new. It is the oldest play in the imperial handbook: break the will of the people by making daily life unlivable. But here is the tragic irony: the Ukrainians have shown more resilience than any European nation in decades. They have done what we have failed to do – they have remembered that some things are worth dying for. Their shattered souls are not a sign of defeat; they are a testament to a spirit we in the pampered West have long since anaesthetised.
What then is to be done? A true historian knows that civilisations do not save themselves by half-measures. If Britain and its allies truly believe that a Russian victory would be a catastrophe for the liberal order, then they must act as if they believe it. That means not merely condemning terror campaigns but matching them with an overwhelming response. It means accepting the economic pain of total energy independence from Russia. It means sending not just defensive weapons but the long-range missiles that can strike at the Kremlin’s own logistics. It means, in short, acknowledging that this is not a ‘conflict’ or a ‘crisis’ but a war for the very shape of the century.
And yet, I suspect we will not do this. Because the West has become a civilisation of spectators. We prefer the clean abstraction of a tweet to the messy reality of a bombed-out maternity ward. We will wring our hands over shattered souls while carefully ensuring that no British soldier ever has to risk his own. This is the moral calculus of a decadent age.
So let us not pretend that the condemnation from London changes anything. Putin knows, and we know, that words are cheap and lives are dear. The only question that matters now is whether we still possess the will to pay the price for our own survival. If not, then Kyiv will be a prologue – a footnote in the slow unraveling of a continent that forgot what it meant to fight for something other than comfort.
