It is an essential British interest that Putin’s efforts to split Germany, France and Italy from the front line states fails.
Both countries look set to continue to rub along uneasily, mixing elements of cooperation and competition along the way.
Where China has clients, Britain has partners; where Russia has proxies, we have friends.
Mission creep is even easier when it’s another nation’s soldiers fighting and dying on the front line.
Or are more than three million armed personnel going to continue to sit it out while the Ukrainians battle it out?
The European Union has wholly failed to coordinate a European economic strategy that minimises dependence on Russia.
Whilst the Western powers are united and re-arming, major regional players are refusing to follow their lead.
Germany, Hungary, Italy and Bulgaria are highly dependent on Russian gas exports, raising the prospect of bitter arguments to come.
Managing costs, appeasing consumers, and diversifying our energy supply are all crucial to ensuring the target can be met with voters’ consent.
Moscow’s status anxiety previously impeded an ‘alliance of autocracies’. It can no longer afford it.
The Middle East had been entering a period of relative calm, but Putin’s aggression in Europe puts it at risk.
Talk of face-saving and exit ramps is not for our benefit, nor really for Putin’s, but for Ukraine’s.
As events in Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Georgia show, the edifice that Putin has painstakingly put in place is now in the greatest of danger.
Furthemore, the Government’s forthcoming strategy offers little prospect of lower bills any time soon.
If extreme escalation is to be avoided, then the best option is for Zelensky and Putin to eventually meet in face-to-face talks.