April 7

SIR – The West, in particular the EU, has Ukrainian blood on its hands. What more horror must the Ukrainians suffer before we take decisive action?

The very least is to impose immediately complete and absolute sanctions on the Russian economy. There must be no trade whatsoever. 

The German and French governments have to come off the fence and face the economic hardship we all need to endure, in order to put a stop to Putin’s evil war. All politicians need to understand that the people they represent are willing to suffer a fall in their living standards to end this misery. 
Dr Jonathan Edwards
Ringwood, Hampshire

SIR – I lived in London throughout the Second World War. It would have been unthinkable then to be buying gas from Nazi Germany while it was slaughtering millions. Why is Russian gas not sanctioned?
John Jenkins
Bath, Somerset

SIR – Dmitri Medvedev, the deputy to Vladimir Putin in Russia’s security council, has stated that Mr Putin’s goal is to “build an open Eurasia, from Lisbon to Vladivostok”.

Russia’s armies continue, with Sergei Lavrov the foreign minister, defending the indefensible, to use unspeakable brutality and commit indictable war crimes in Ukraine – “waging aggressive war”, in the parlance of the Nuremberg trials.

It seems inevitable that Nato will at some juncture be forced to confront, and almost certainly fight, Putin, Lavrov and Medvedev’s Russia.

It is this which should occupy the immediate attention of Britain’s foreign and defence policies, and be the priority of the Treasury, while the Home Office and Department of Energy should focus to the point of obsession on our oil and gas security.

The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs should be extending incentives to our farmers to plant and harvest wheat in our own fields. Wheat will not be available from abroad in the volume we require and it is not for us to deprive developing nations of a staple those nations will not be able to afford.

Net zero and rewilding may deserve consideration – but not now.
Major John Urquhart (retd)
Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk

SIR – The Telegraph online world news yesterday reported Mikhail Khodorkovsky (the exiled former head of Yukos Oil) telling Bloomberg: “The US and its allies fail to understand that, from President Vladimir Putin’s perspective, they are already at war with Russia.”

If that assessment be correct, and I think it is, in the light of the horrific evidence now emerging from Ukraine of the unlawful behaviour of Russian troops towards civilians, it is clear that, unless the Russian government is not only defeated in Ukraine, but comprehensively, it will use tactics of invasion and indiscriminate killing of civilians in the Baltic states and further afield to destroy Western liberal democratic culture. 

Again, Volodymyr Zelensky, the Ukrainian President, correctly in my opinion, told the UN on Tuesday that “Russia should be kicked off the Security Council or that the UN should simply dissolve itself, because the entire structure of global security established in 1945 had failed”.

The West must embrace, militarily, in all its modern manifestations, the defeat of the Russian government. Indeed, it might have tentatively begun to do so with further sanctions, although how effective they will prove to be remains to be seen. The moment for military intervention by the West is growing perilously close.

The Third World War has started. It is inevitable that it will involve nuclear weapons at some point. That eventuality is something about which we, the people of Europe and the United States, need to be warned; and for which we need to be prepared.
The Rev His Honour Peter Morrell
Nassington, Northamptonshire