Race against time 

While talk of a Third World War should generally be dismissed as hyperbole, the stakes are getting higher in recent weeks and the threat to our collective safety thus comes under greater scrutiny.

When US president Joe Biden gave the nod to Ukraine to use American missiles to bomb long-range targets inside Russia, the response from inside the Kremlin was typically aggressive, alleging Western ‘escalation’ of a conflict the Putin administration often seems to forget it started — without provocation and, under international law, illegally.

Quite what this late-in-the-day American change of heart will mean in the long term is not yet clear, but it appears the Biden move is aimed at trying to engineer some sort of scenario which would bring the warring parties to the negotiating table in short order, or at least strengthening Ukraine’s hand in the event of peace talks.

To date in this conflict, the wider Russian population has been largely spared from the indiscriminate shelling consistently inflicted on their Ukrainian counterparts and popular support for the invasion has — as far as can be ascertained — remained in favour of Putin’s actions.

While we know that Russia has suffered tremendous losses in terms of military deaths and casualties, it has been boosted by thousands of troops sent from North Korea and its wider citizenry has been largely unaffected. That might change radically if the Ukrainians successfully focus on a wider swathe of targets than it has thus far been able to hit.

If ordinary Russians are brought closer to the realities of modern warfare and the often-arbitrary brutality of massed missile and drone attacks, then support for Putin and his accomplices could diminish quickly.

The other side of the coin is that the Americans and their European allies are increasingly worried about the looming shadow of president-elect Donald Trump and concerned that domestic and international security will be undermined by the incoming administration.

Securing an end to hostilities in Ukraine before Trump ascends to power in January is a very desirable option right now and any possibility of a negotiated settlement would be welcome. Widespread backing for Biden’s move — and especially that from those countries feeling most vulnerable to Russian expansionism, such as Poland and the Baltic states — will send a clear message to Moscow.

That Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan presented a peace plan to the G20 summit in Brazil is another sign to Moscow that it will have to enter talks at some point. Whether either move has the desired effect remains to be seen.