Hello and welcome to the latest podcast from the Centre for European Reform.

I'm Ian Bond, the CER's Deputy director. It's almost exactly three years since Russia

launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine. But of course, that wasn't the start of Russia's

war of aggression against Ukraine. That came in February 2014, when so-called little green men

appeared in Crimea. But the scale and the savagery of the attack in 2022

was something that Europe had not seen for many years.

And it came as a shock not only to Ukraine, but to democracies across the world.

And I think it's fair to say that the initial reaction of the democratic world was to show solidarity with Ukraine, certainly by taking in Ukrainian refugees and so on, but to assume in most cases that the war would end quickly in a Russian victory.

Well, it soon became clear that Ukrainians had other ideas and that the more effectively

the Ukrainians defended themselves, the more help the West gave them.

In fact, Russia's advances reached their maximum extent in April 2022.

Russia now occupies about one-fifth of Ukrainian territory.

The last year has been quite difficult for Ukraine, for most of the time the Russians have been advancing, albeit slowly.

Western assistance has not always come as quickly as it should, particularly from the United States.

And now the Trump administration is cozying up to Vladimir Putin, offering him

continued control of some Ukrainian territory, dropping the idea of NATO membership for Ukraine,

promising him that there won't be any American troops in Ukraine, putting pressure on Ukraine

to give half its mineral wealth to the US, and then most scandalously, blaming Ukraine for the fact that it was the victim of an unprovoked attack from Russia.

And at a time when the West should be ratcheting up sanctions on Russia, until it's sure that the threat from Moscow is over,

the US Secretary of State Marco Rubio in Riyadh yesterday was talking about

pretty unique, potentially historic economic partnerships with Putin once the war was over.

So these are worrying times for Ukrainians and for friends of Ukraine. So it seems like a good

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