By Ariana Gic

May 7, 2026

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Ukraine, according to current Western rhetoric, needs to be a “steel porcupine” – highly resilient militarily, diplomatically, and even economically. Ukraine must build itself to be indigestible to aggressor Russia.

But like all talk about the “remarkable resilience” of Ukraine and Ukrainians, this catchphrase serves as a convenient excuse for the West to evade its legal and moral obligations to Ukraine and to humanity, pushing a narrative of “resilience” that forces Ukrainians to endure a perpetual hell.

In the real world beyond the world of catch-phrase-filled rhetoric, the “steel porcupine” model means ongoing, daily annihilation. It means the continuation of relentless slaughter of civilians, abductions, torture, and illegal detention of Ukrainians. It means the ongoing destruction of Ukrainian infrastructure, ecosystem, forests, farmland, homes, and everything else imaginable. It means continued genocide of Ukrainians, including the abduction of Ukrainian children and their forcible transfer to Russia to be brainwashed to be good Russians who hate Ukrainians. It means the continuation of trauma which surpasses all nightmares.

The trauma inflicted by Russia on Ukraine is profound and unrelenting.

The trauma is the sound of parents praying that their children will be found alive in the rubble of their destroyed homes. It is the sight of volunteers gathering bodies with severed heads off the streets after a drone strike. It is the harrowing reality of children waking up in hospitals, missing limbs, looking for parents who may have been killed themselves. It is the agonizing fear and uncertainty families of prisoners of war endure, hoping their loved ones are still alive and that they might one day return from torture so cruel and evil it defies all comprehension.

It is civilians buying groceries hoping they won’t be blown to unrecognizable pieces in Russia’s “human safari” attacks where ordinary Ukrainians are targeted day in and out, day after day, by Russian drone strikes… The elderly deprived of the last few years of their lives in peace, forced to start “new” in their 80’s and 90’s after losing everything and everyone. Children forced to watch their mothers and fathers gang raped by Russian forces before their parents are then forced to watch their traumatized children be raped by the same men…. It is men castrated. It is women so tortured that that they will never conceive. Civilians publicly hanged. The heads of murdered Ukrainians displayed on stakes. Ears of Ukrainian soldiers cut off their heads worn as prizes…. These horrors of horrors are just a taste of the trauma Russia inflicts upon Ukrainians every single day. They are not isolated incidents, but the daily, methodical trauma deliberately inflicts upon the Ukrainian people.

When we say Ukraine should become a “steel porcupine,” we are telling Ukrainians to be self-reliant against a foe we are afraid to confront – even collectively. It places the burden of defending international order solely on Ukraine, subjecting Ukrainians to unending trauma while we treat their country as a buffer. We are telling Ukrainians to endure more hell on earth than they already have for years because we are too afraid to fulfill our legal and moral obligations to Ukrainians and humanity.

We are telling Ukrainians to endure endless traumatizing experiences (that we will make ‘inspiring’ movies about in the future) because we are using them as a human shield as we buy time to ready for Russian aggression against our soil. It is a demand for impossible endurance in the face of unending, systemic destruction – a reality far crueler than the polished, plucky, optimistic rhetoric suggest. Ultimately, demanding “steel” endurance is a cruel detachment from the reality of systemic destruction, hiding our fear and cowardice behind a facade of admiration.

Many Western leaders acknowledge that Ukraine is fighting for the free world and that this is our fight too. Yet, despite this acknowledgement, rather than fighting alongside Ukrainians, we limit our support, cowardly applauding, offering admiration instead of the decisive action needed to defeat this existential threat. We tell Ukrainians they inspire us, yet our actions fall short of our declared values.

Rather than helping Ukraine defeat a stoppable foe. Western nations are misusing a partner nation as a human shield against a common foe. The current policy of coercing Ukraine into giving up part of its land and people is not only morally reprehensible, but a facilitation of the violation of international law. Rather than acknowledging that such concessions will not save Ukraine and only reward Russia, we pretend that is the only viable path to a “just peace” denying that this is an affront to justice, and that occupation is not peace. We pretend that Moscow will be satiated, ignoring Russia’s imperialist, expansionist, and aggressive character, and ignoring that its war against Ukraine is a battering ram against the entire western-led, international rules-based order. And then absurdly, pledges are made that Ukraine’s envisioned rump state remaining after making concessions to Russia will be protected by an unwilling Coalition of the Willing, which, we are to believe, will do tomorrow what they are unwilling to do today – militarily confront Russia.

Rather than helping Ukraine defeat our common enemy today, we are preparing for Russia to invade us “in the future” relying on the comforting lie that it will be far enough in the future that we will be prepared…. But this comforting lie hides the uncomfortable truth: Russia is not going to wait for us to be ready, but strike when we are still unsteady, afraid, unprepared, and abandoned by the United States who has now joined Russia in the ranks of evil regime.

Our inaction is not merely fear; it is moral complicity in Russian aggression and genocide of Ukrainians. This cowardice directly fuels the destruction of Ukraine and the profound trauma of its people. Our cowardice facilitates the destruction of the rules-based order, the values underpinning it, and, ultimately, our own demise.

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About author

Ariana Gic is a writer, political and legal analyst, and coordinator of various advocacy campaigns for a strong international response to Russia’s war and genocide against Ukraine. Ms. Gic is the co-author of the upcoming book Unrecognized War. She is the Director of the Direct Initiative International Centre for Ukraine and Senior Advisor at Centre for Eastern European Democracy. Ms. Gic is sanctioned by the Russian Federation. Facebook | Twitter

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Ukraine as “Steel Porcupine” – Cover for Western Cowardice and Inaction