It is decision time for Europe - we must back Zelensky to the hilt

FOR many on Wednesday, standing in Westminster, listening to President Zelensky address the crowd, beams of sunlight filtering through the high windows, it was an historic occasion.

- Emily Sheffield

Next week marks one year of Ukrainian blood being split, their women brutalised, civilians tortured, their cities flattened and husbands and brothers dying on the battlefield.

Their civilian death toll, as Zelensky painfully knows, will dramatically mount in the coming months, as Vladimir Putin enters a new phase in his war on Ukraine. Life is cheap for him, and the source of his young recruits cruelly plentiful.

Putin has mobilised the Russian economy for a long war. In Europe, we have not. "Ammunition, ammunition, ammunition," was the Ukrainian's repeated request yesterday to Europe.

Zelensky knows how to use his words and his throaty growl to great effect. He knows without our continued support, Ukraine will fail. And Russia will win. For Bob Seely, the Tory MP, and chair of the Russia and Ukraine parliamentary groups, the urgency is real: "We made the mistake of overestimating Russian strength and firepower at the beginning of this war, but it would be a mistake again to underestimate them now."