I've almost finished Plokhy's book "The Russo-Ukrainian War", or what I would have titled, "What Did I Miss?" (in believing Putin wouldn't invade).

A takeaway for me is that the West has long been distrustful of Russians AND Ukrainians. Since 2014 Ukraine has continued to exceed expectations in being patient while the West tries to solve the increasingly imperialist Putin problem.

I believe Ukraine was just starting to integrate with the West starting with the war. But it's been a long process (as others say about the war itself).

From the beginning, the West was afraid of starting an all-out war by giving weapons to Ukraine. Yet Ukraine has shown immense discipline in taking whatever it can get from the West without getting angry (because they sure the f are entitled to!). They have allowed Russia to continually attack its cities without doing the same in St Petersburg and Moscow.

The Storm Shadow to me is the final recognition that Ukraine is "one of us", so to speak. Ukraine and the U.K. are now joined at the hip.

This is a long way of saying that I don't believe the media is correct that the West needs Ukraine to take over all the territory this year. If Ukraine wants to train another year, the West will standby and continue to send more and more, and better, weapons. Ukraine has gained that amount of trust.

And they've been working on it for 8 years.