This is no time to surrender to Putin’s rockets – still less his words

Editorial: The West can either give the Russian leader what he craves without a fight or it can call his bluff and watch while he does precisely nothing. The Russian leader is a bully – everything he does proves it

By their deeds shall ye know them.” Vladimir Putin does not often call the words of St Matthew’s Gospel to mind, but history has proved that he should not automatically be taken at his word.

He did, after all, reassure a variety of European statesmen and women that he had no interest in invading Ukraine, just before the deeds that followed the announcement of his “special military operation” suggested otherwise.

Conversely, his constant threats of thermonuclear armageddon, growing more intense with every Western act of support for Ukraine, have come to precisely nought. New York, Paris and London were not bombed in retaliation, and nor will they be – his lack of deeds, here, belying his real intentions.

One day, the boy in the Kremlin may not cry wolf; either way, it will always pay to treat his sometimes rambling pronouncements with a degree of scepticism.

His attempts to intimidate the West have occasionally caused some to pause and reconsider the strength of their commitment to Ukraine. That is understandable. Germany, with its history and the different dynamics that are present in its domestic political culture, need not be derided for reflecting on its eastern policy. At the moment, however, President Putin’s bluff is unusually blatant.

The Russians, apparently, have recently developed a “new conventional intermediate-range missile”, which was launched, they claim, in response to the Americans and the British permitting Kyiv to use their longer-range missile systems, ATACMS and Storm Shadows, against targets on Russian territory.

Well, it so happens that the “new” terror rockets aren’t that new. The Russians and their Soviet antecedents have for decades had all the missiles they could ever need – short-range, intermediate and intercontinental ballistic missiles that can be launched from land, sea, air and space.

The new weapon has predictably been trialled against Ukrainian targets – not Washington DC – and Volodymyr Zelensky has rightly expressed his fears for his people. It may be that the new Oreshnik missile can carry more warheads and travel longer distances than the older Iskanders.

Given that it is a type of MIRV (multiple independently targetable re-entry vehicle), its significance is more symbolic – as this kind of weapon is closely associated with nuclear warfare, and thus it is a clear signal to the West to consider what might happen if President Putin’s patience is exhausted.

But no nuclear warheads have been dropped on Ukraine, let alone Western Europe, and if they were going to be, that would probably have happened by now.

What, then, is the West to make of the changes to Russia’s nuclear doctrine, lowering the threshold for their use? And of the assertion that since the authorisation of ATACMS and Storm Shadows, American and British military facilities are now legitimate targets?

The answer is the same as it has been since before the original invasion of Ukraine in 2014 – which is that if the West capitulates in the face of threats, empty or real, then Putin will take full advantage of such weakness at a point that suits him.

This principle is equally applicable now. If Donald Trump really did arrive in the White House and somehow organise a ceasefire in Ukraine within 24 hours, leaving Russia to digest, more or less, all the Ukrainian territory it has already occupied, then such a peace would be neither lasting nor attractive in its terms.

Sooner or later, the hunger for territorial expansion would return, and Mr Trump or his successors would face the very same threats and dilemmas that have already faced presidents Obama, Biden, and Trump himself.

The West can either give Putin what he craves without a fight or it can match his threats with action, call his bluff, and watch while he does precisely nothing. The Russian leader is a bully, and everything he has done has proved this point.

Inspired by the defiance shown by President Zelensky and his people, the West has so far rejected the humiliation of appeasement. After everything that Ukraine and its allies have been through over the past few years, this is no time to surrender to Putin’s rockets – still less his words.