Time to show Ukraine who we are now...

OUR MUNICH moment has arrived again – let's not blow it this time.

- Simon Brocklebank-Fowler

Ukraine is on the brink of a defensive fight for its life. The Western alliance is to be tested as never before since Vietnam but in a European war with stronger analogies with the run-up to the Second World War than the Gulf or Asian wars of the past 60 years.

The Russians have even done an eleventh-hour deal with an ambitious neighbour, this time China rather than Germany, to suit her own short-term ambitions.

There are unavoidable prompts in Robert Harris's film adaptation of his book on the 1938 Munich crisis. Harris puts up a good case that the British people were just not up for war until Chamberlain had tried every last avenue for peace.

Geo-strategically, though, the case for Britain standing with France and Czechoslovakia against German invasion in 1938 is strong: a well-armed country, with strong hill borders and a large domestic arms industry. A much better bet than Poland a year later, which Hitler was understandably incredulous we would seek to defend.

But the case for standing today with Ukraine is stronger than for Czechoslovakia then. It is at the main EU/Nato border, not a hostile country far away. We do not risk cataclysm for ourselves but only saving an allied country from one about to befall it; and from a clear enemy of ours, Russia, a country which has repeatedly murdered British citizens on our own soil.

I recently spent a week in beautiful and welcoming Ukraine, catching the last plane out of Kyiv just before Foreign Office advice switched to discourage all but essential travel. Our embassy staff had been leaving for some time already.

Disconcertingly, the Russian mission was already emptying out pretty quickly too.