I wonder if Christopher Miller (“Volodymyr Zelenskyy pushes to ‘speed up’ defences on Ukraine frontline”, FT.com, December 1) knows what the Ukrainian is for “thank you”. No one I asked in Crimea visiting the peninsula in 2022 did, with everyone speaking Russian. As a person’s nationality is determined by the language he thinks in, Vladimir Putin is right that the Russians and the Ukrainians are one nation.
Then the current conflict in Ukraine is a civil war that never ends in peace: the House of Tudor won in Britain in 1487, the North in the US in 1865, the Bolsheviks in the Russian Empire in 1923 (in spite of the west’s military expeditions), the nationalists in Spain in 1939 (in spite of the Soviet Union’s uphold), and the Taliban in Afghanistan in 2021 (in spite of Nato’s intervention).
Zelenskyy is right in saying, “We didn’t get all the weapons we wanted, I can’t be satisfied, but I also can’t complain too much” as more and more voters in the west realise they are throwing good money after bad in Ukraine. Hence they elect candidates appreciate Robert Fico in Slovakia and Geert Wilders in the Netherlands.
No doubt even Kyiv sees that as a straw in the wind and will be utterly crushed if something similar happens next year in the US.
Mergen Mongush
Moscow, Russia
