Quousque Tandem Abutere, Putina...

Actually, No, the Patience of Western Leaders Is Their Guilt—and Their Grave

9-storey apartment building in Kyiv after Russian attack on the city with missiles and drones in the night on 17 June 2025. At least 28 people died and at least 134 were injured in Kyiv. Picture: Ministry of Internal Affairs of Ukraine

Everyone knows the first of Cicero’s four Catilinarian Orations by heart and would spontaneously want to apply it to Putin, who has been flooding the world with his mass crimes for twenty-five years. The real problem is ultimately not so much that Russia seems to be abusing our patience, but that democratic leaders are so patient—patient in the face of crimes committed against others: Chechens, Georgians, Syrians, Ukrainians, Africans. This supposed patience is a sign of their distance as much as their stupidity, of their fear of absolute evil as much as their willful blindness—in short, of their propensity to flee the real world. Putin is not abusing in the usual sense, but he is gauging and sizing up.

He tests and despises. He looks down on these “patient” leaders who offer him a license to murder at will. He abuses in this way because he is allowed to abuse. We remember Barack Obama, who coined the idiotic notion of “strategic patience,” which encapsulates the essence of his disastrous foreign policy. That patience, like today’s, is anything but strategic. It is even the negation of strategy: it reflects not only its utter absence, but also the lack of any will to forge one.

This patience, which is nothing more than a cover for their failure in the face of history, is ultimately their guilt. Tomorrow, it could be their grave.

The only ones today with such strategic thinking are the Ukrainians—and a few of their rare supporters since the beginning, i.e., 2014, who demanded that Western leaders sever all ties with Russia and intervene militarily. They cannot be patient in the face of an entire state that murders them daily and has sworn to annihilate them. Above all, they have understood that they can never fully count on not only the support, but also the intelligence of Westerners, including those who say they “stand with Ukraine and the Ukrainians” and who—which is perhaps worse, in terms of its consequences, than calculated cynicism—sincerely claim that they are “doing everything” to come to its aid. This is the worst because they do not know what they are doing—but that does not imply the forgiveness suggested by Christ’s words. I have written this several times here: Ukrainians know that they are ultimately alone—and victory will be theirs.

Let those who read me imagine this: everything rests on them, not only their own fate, but also the defense of the whole of Europe. It is an incredible task that they have been called upon to accept—they had no choice. This also says a lot about the “others”—that is, us.

I have mentioned on these pages on a few occasions recently that certain Western leaders, including in Western Europe, have understood this. Their statements seemed to show that they knew Putin would fight to the bitter end and that he wanted only one thing: the total destruction of Ukraine and the annihilation, as far as possible, of the Ukrainian people. They also said, with a lucidity that I have sometimes praised—after all, a few of us have been saying this for fifteen years—that his target was the whole of Europe. Some have denounced the absolute crimes committed by the Russians more vehemently than in the past. But all this for what—for what action? Even the new “terrible” sanctions against Russia are slow in coming, despite being announced as “very fast.” Some, I have often worried, are still repeating the absurd and disastrous rhetoric of possible “peace talks” with Moscow—as if this were not, in itself and in its consequences, completely insane. The simulacra of diplomacy lead to a derailment of reason and give rise to monsters. One of these is the idea of a possible peace with Russia. Let’s be clear: a so-called peace strategy is the exact opposite of a strategy for victory. I have tried, unsuccessfully, to explain this to one of these European leaders.

Of course, I am told, there has been some progress: several European governments have increased their aid budgets for Ukraine, are beginning—wisely—to establish partnerships with Ukrainian arms manufacturers to produce weapons jointly—a win-win situation—and appear determined to lift all restrictions on the use of certain weapons. They have finally agreed to set up a special tribunal to try crimes of aggression, sometimes referred to as “crimes of leadership,” which will make it possible to prosecute Putin and other criminals in the Russian state leadership directly. I can only welcome this decisive step, as such a tribunal is potentially safer, faster, and more direct than the International Criminal Court can be, given its own procedures and the lack of possible judgments in absentia.

So, of course, we are not starting from scratch. We can also assume that the Europeans will continue to support Ukraine when Trump’s US abandons it – and I say “when” and not “if,” because I have no doubt that the ideological collusion between the MAGA leader and Putin is too strong for it to be otherwise. They will therefore continue this aid—but only until they are directly involved in a war launched directly by the Russians. At that point, it will be a rout.

For such is the paradox of the enemy: the Russian economy is collapsing—even if it can certainly hold out for a few more years—but it is nevertheless managing to accelerate its arms production, much more so than Europe. Ultimately, it is against us that it intends to wage war. European leaders know this—and that is the tragedy.

What Europeans in particular failed to understand was that time was running out. Of course, every day counts, first and foremost to save Ukrainian lives—the most tragic thing is that I was already writing this more than two years ago. It is therefore both unimaginable and unacceptable that Europeans have not done everything possible to establish, at the very least, a no-fly zone over western Ukraine.

This is urgent, and I believe it should cover the entire Ukrainian territory. There is no reason why Western countries should not operate directly on Ukrainian soil to protect civilians. Here too, many of us have been calling for this from the outset. There is also nothing to prevent us from striking Russian launchers operating from Russian territory directly.

Deterrence starts there. Putin would have understood the message if we had done so on February 24, 2022, or at least a few months later. Not only would we have saved tens and probably hundreds of thousands of lives, but we would have strengthened our own security. But time is also running out for us—and the death knell is already ringing in the distance.

If we want to prevent Putin from attacking Europe in a few years, certainly fewer than we think, we must understand that the only defense is precisely attack. It is not only for the Ukrainians that we, Europeans and allies, must defeat Russia in Ukraine, but also for ourselves. Without this total defeat of Moscow, we will lose the next war. Perhaps the only hope now is that the Ukrainians themselves will save us from disaster.

I very much fear that Europe’s leaders are not yet up to the task of history—but then, perhaps that is too much to ask of them, both yesterday and today.