‘Not losing’ is not enough: it’s time for Europe to finally get serious about a Ukrainian victory | Timothy Garton Ash

In Munich I heard both Ukrainians and Alexei Navalny's widow tell us why Putin must be defeated

As we approach the second anniversary of Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine this Saturday, ask yourself a simple question: is Europe at war? When I put this to a room full of participants at the Munich security conference last Sunday, most of them raised their hands to say yes, Europe is at war. But then I asked a second question: do you think most people in your own country have woken up to this? Very few hands went up.

This was a Munich of painful contrasts. Here, at the conference, were badly wounded Ukrainian soldiers giving us stories from a frontline hell. Yuliia Paievska, a veteran military medic, told us she had seen streams of blood, rivers of suffering", and that children have died in my arms". We are the dogs of war," she said, recalling how she herself was captured in Mariupol, imprisoned for three months and tortured by the Russians. Give us the weapons," she concluded, to kill this war."

Timothy Garton Ash is a historian, political writer and Guardian columnist