EU leaders need to invoke the spirit of Britain’s great wartime leader against the tyranny of Putin, says Arseniy Yatsenyuk

The Maidan protest of 2014 in Kiev was a show of support for the EU over Russia. Now the battle is on to secure the future of the pro-Europe nationCredit: Alexander Koerner/Getty

David Blair Chief Foreign Affairs Commentator

03 October 2025

Europe’s leaders need to summon “Churchillian” resolve and avoid being “paralysed by fear” as they face down Vladimir Putin’s aggression, Ukraine’s first wartime prime minister told The Telegraph on Friday.

Arseniy Yatsenyuk assumed the premiership in Kyiv in February 2014, after a popular revolution had overthrown a pro-Russian president. 

So corrupt was the previous government that only €10,000 were in the state coffers when Mr Yatsenyuk took office.

Within days, Putin had seized Crimea and soon afterwards he invaded eastern Ukraine, starting the war that has raged ever since. 

Even now, after 11 years of combat claiming hundreds of thousands of lives, Mr Yatsenyuk still questions whether Western leaders have grasped the reality of the threat from Putin.

“I don’t want to go after European leaders because they are our allies. But I wish to see a Churchillian style among European leaders,” he said.

“We are in a very high deficit of this kind of Churchillian style. We desperately need those who can make real decisions, who are not paralysed by fear,” he said.

“They always try to calibrate and to calculate and to be very cautious. That’s not the way you can stop dictators.”

The price of failing to deter Putin is evident in the brazen violations by Russian drones and jets of Polish and Estonian airspace.

Denmark’s government, too, accused Russia of launching the drones that forced the closure of Copenhagen airport last month.

Drone incursion incidents have also occurred in Germany, Norway, Romania, the Netherlands and Sweden – affecting hundreds of flights.

This constant drumbeat of incidents makes it still more extraordinary that when Mr Yatsenyuk was prime minister of Ukraine from 2014-16, he struggled to convince his European colleagues of the basic fact that Putin had invaded his country.

“I had to travel all over the world, and mainly in Europe, just to convince my European counterparts that it was the Russian military who was deployed in Crimea and in the east of Ukraine,” he recalled.

“They said, ‘Look but Putin said it’s not his military. It’s some kind of volunteer battalions of just pro-Russian forces in Crimea’. Are you kidding?”

Mr Yatsenyuk added: “There was this old style outdated pattern that ‘please let’s not escalate. Let’s try to find the common ground with Russians. Maybe he will step back and we will manage to somehow de-escalate the situation’. This was the joint approach of both Americans and Europeans.”

Some European leaders would even defend Putin. 

“They didn’t recognise that Putin is a real dictator. ‘He’s such a kind guy, he smiles, he speaks German, he knows a few English words and he says that Russia could be a democratic state and he always cites that Russia has been humiliated’,” recalled Mr Yatsenyuk.

“My beloved Western friends, they always bought these grievances – ‘maybe he is right’.”

During those crucial years, Mr Yatsenyuk implored Ukraine’s friends for financial support, Nato membership and weapons. 

He received an IMF programme on the first, empty words on the second – and nothing on the third.

Instead, Britain, Germany and France responded to Putin’s first invasion by imposing a de facto arms embargo on Ukraine which stayed in place until January 2022 – a month before the full-scale onslaught – when Boris Johnson as prime minister sent 2,000 anti-tank missiles.

“I always said we need defensive weapons,” said Mr Yatsenyuk. “But we didn’t get anything.”

America also refused to supply arms until 2018 when Donald Trump in his first term sent Javelin anti-tank missiles.

As he sought help abroad, Mr Yatsenyuk faced constant crises at home. 

“We’re in a state of war and in that particular period I had to decrease the budget deficit from 10 per cent [of GDP] to 3 per cent – and I did it,” he said.

“I had to increase the expenditure for the military up to 5 per cent [of GDP] for the first time in history. I was begging for every penny – could you guys help me? And instead of that I had a very tough and stiff programme imposed by the IMF on Ukraine, and I executed everything.

“I was out of cash, out of ammo and out of real financial and economic support. I want to be very clear about that. And I wish to see any government on Earth who can cope with this – at the time of war.”

A chilling warning

In 2017, Arseniy Yatsenyuk made chillingly accurate comments when he told Western leaders: start showing statesmanship, or see the world as you know it collapse.

“Vladimir Putin is obsessed with building a new geo-political architecture,” he told The Telegraph during a visit to London.

“We are not the only country in danger. A new global architecture really could emerge. The key thing for today is for the Free World to preserve – it has to preserve – the global order established after the Second World War.” 

Three years earlier, after Russia annexed Crimea, he said that his nation stood in the path of Moscow’s supposed ambition to topple the “global order” and rebuild the Soviet Union.

As for Putin’s objectives, he said: “His aim is not just to take Donetsk and Luhansk. His goal is to take the entire Ukraine. He cannot cope with an idea that Ukraine would be a part of the EU family. He wants to restore the Soviet Union.”

If Ukraine had received weapons, more money and Nato membership after the first invasion, Mr Yatsenyuk stated emphatically: “This war would never have happened.”

The reality of today’s situation, he added, was that neither side was winning. “We have to do our utmost to make Ukraine win,” he said.

That would take a new package of American support from Congress, financing for Ukraine’s budget deficit for the next three years, a huge expansion of Europe’s arms-making capacity, and the seizure of the £200bn of immobilised Russian assets.

Instead of holding summits and inventing a “coalition of the willing”, Europe should just take the necessary action.

“Could you just stop inventing all these fancy phrases?” asked Mr Yatsenyuk.

“Guys, with all due respect, Putin is laughing at us. Would you do everything in silence? Just with a tight lip but with action. No announcement, no summit, just do it.”

Mr Yatsenyuk, 51, now chairs the Kyiv security forum and founded the Open Ukraine Foundation. He stressed that supporting Ukraine’s struggle was an “investment” in European security. 

“We’re fighting for our lives,” he said. “But we’re also defending you.”