If the West wants to save Ukraine, it must act now and now. Because soon it may be too late to save the country, writes the British The Telegraph.
The White House is expected to lift a ban on Ukraine striking targets deep inside Russian territory with Western missiles. And Britain to follow suit. And here again comes the question of whether this Western support is not too late to turn the tide of the war in favor of Kiev?
The Ukrainian army has been in Russia's Kursk region for over a month, controlling nearly 1,000 square kilometers of Russian land. Moscow was forced to evacuate around 150,000 civilians. According to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, 60,000 Russian soldiers have been redeployed from the Ukrainian front lines to fight in Kursk.
There are fears that the momentum Ukraine has managed to gather in recent weeks could be lost due to indecisive action by Western countries. The Russian army is already counterattacking in Kursk. Putin's forces continue to advance around the Donbas city of Pokrovsk, increasing the likelihood that the Ukrainian army will soon have to retreat further.
Ukraine's slow progress is largely due to equally slow support from its Western allies. Zelensky has been appealing to the US, UK and Europe for months for permission to use Western long-range missiles to strike military targets on Russian soil. Over the past two and a half years, we've seen this pattern repeated over and over over whether to deliver long-range missiles at all, and before that tanks, F-16s, and multiple financial packages.
There are several reasons why Western support for Ukraine has been so slow. The first is that Kiev's allies are terrified that any new aid package or arms delivery could trigger a Russian escalation in the war that would prompt Putin to push the nuclear button or draw other countries more directly into the conflict. Public support for Ukraine has also declined in many countries thanks to this fear, which in turn has made it harder for politicians to make a convincing case for sending more funds and weapons to help Zelensky's forces.
However, the Ukrainian invasion of Kursk Oblast is the clearest evidence yet that Putin's repeated threats to use nuclear weapons against any attacks on Russian soil are nothing more than empty talk. The West must help Ukraine, be bolder and act now. Only in this way will Ukraine win and peace in Europe will be restored.