Great men don’t make history, history makes great men – or so Hegel is supposed to have said. Never has that seemed more apt than today.

A former TV actor and comedian, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, a man whose name we cannot even spell, became a heroic war leader last week, standing firm against the monstrous aggression of Vladimir Putin. Not for him the usual response of scuttling out of the country for comfortable exile.

This, even though he realised that he, and his family, are Russian target number one. “I don’t need transport,” he told the Americans when they offered him a flight to safety. “I need ammunition”.

And strange, too, that another comedian, Boris Johnson, he of the tousled hair and Peppa Pig jokes, should have found himself in the Churchill role – trying to put some lead in the pencil of the European Union. Germany baulked at the Prime Minister’s call, echoed by Nicola Sturgeon, for Europe to cut Russia out of the Swift electronic banking payments arrangement.

This would have truly isolated Putin from the world’s financial system. But it would also have damaged German and Italian banks, and disrupted energy contracts. That was a sanction too far for Brussels.

The claim, incidentally, that the Swift payments system is somehow impossible to target is simply untrue. Iran was cast out of Swift in 2012, so why not Russia? This was a commercial decision, plain and simple.

Nor did Europe move to restrict Russian oil and gas imports. The volumes actually increased last week. Worth $250 billion annually, oil and gas revenues are the source of Putin’s personal wealth and also the means to finance his army.

There won’t even be a travel ban on peripatetic Russian oligarchs. Italy reportedly sought an agreement not to sanction luxury goods exports – which it now denies. The former EU president Donald Tusk said Germany and Italy had “disgraced themselves”.

This on the same day that the 13 soldiers of Snake Island told a Russian warship to “go f*** themselves” before dying at their posts.

Ordinary men and women were picking up rifles and Molotov cocktails in Kyiv. It was hard for the Ukrainian resistance not to conclude that the Europe they hope to join had allied, economically at least, with Vladimir Putin.

Certainly there was little evidence of any serious challenge to Russian expansionism. In the councils of Europe there was muttered talk of “realism”. We are not going to go to war with Russia, so why wreck Europe’s economy in a lost cause?

To many European leaders the sight of Ukrainian irregulars throwing petrol bombs at armoured vehicles seems futile. They would rather the resistance were over, and Ukraine turned into a Putin puppet state, like Belarus. Then everyone could return to business as usual.

Putin’s gamble

PUTIN may be increasingly mad, raving about ousting “drug dealers and neo-Nazis” from Ukraine, but he was always a shrewd reader of the moral condition of the West. His gamble was that Europe would always put GDP first. Brussels lacks the moral will and the military means to defend the first European country to be invaded by a fascist dictator since the Second World War.

As for the linchpin of the Western alliance, the United States, it is divided internally by endless culture wars and led by a geriatric with little strategic sense. Putin noted Joe Biden’s chaotic departure from Afghanistan, handing a wrecked country to the merciless misogynists of the Taliban. America abandoned the Afghanis they had persuaded to fight.

Boris Johnson was the only European leader last week speaking with any moral clarity. Animosity towards the Prime Minister should not cloud our judgment. His speeches have been more eloquent and resolute than any in Europe. Mr Johnson spoke, not for himself or his party, but for the Ukrainian people when he condemned Putin as a” bloodstained aggressor who believes in imperial conquest … trying to redraw the map of Europe in blood”.

He said Putin’s “squalid venture must fail and be seen to fail”.

They may only be words, but words matter. President Zelenskyy needs all the moral support he can get. The UK has also provided limited military support to Ukraine. British soldiers have been advising the Ukrainian army for the past year.

Sir Keir Starmer and the Labour frontbenches got the message. They endorsed the sentiments of the Prime Minister without hesitation. The Labour leader then moved swiftly to disown defeatists on his backbenches. Jeremy Corbyn’s Stop The War statement last week shocked even former Corbynites, like the anti-fascist author and agitator Paul Mason.

The STW motion called for a halt to Nato expansion, for Britain to stop sending arms to Ukraine, and for the country to be demilitarised. This came alarmingly close to a restatement of Russia’s war aims. Putin, too, blames Nato, wants the Ukrainian resistance defeated and their country to become a disarmed “buffer” state. The 11 Labour MPs who had signed the Stop The War motion were ordered to remove their names. Only Corbyn refused.

It was significant that Nicola Sturgeon did not join in ritual condemnation of the PM or “Nato aggression”. She may loathe Boris Johnson’s politics, but she supported his calls for tougher sanctions and for standing up firmly to Putin’s war of aggression. No excuses, she said: “Putin must face and feel the wrath of the democratic world.”

Twitter, true to form, then resorted to Brexit culture wars, suggesting Britain’s departure from the EU had somehow encouraged Putin’s expansionism. There may have been a justification in the past for criticising the wisdom of Nato’s expansion into Eastern Europe. But not any more. Putin’s war of aggression has justified Nato’s “open door” policy of allowing all free counties to join the defensive alliance if they wish.

The small Baltic states, Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania, are more convinced than ever that they were wise to join Nato. Not being in the club now looks almost like an invitation to Russia to invade. Putin has threatened action against Finland and Sweden if they dare to apply for membership. This will only make them even more willing to align with Nato. Putin’s aggression is as counter-productive as it is brutal.

Kyiv’s resistance

AT the time of writing, Russia’s armed forces appear to be stalled at the gates of Kyiv. Without heavy weapons and lacking even helmets and flak jackets, the people of Ukraine have given the world an object lesson in bravery. The West must give maximum material and moral support to them now and in the future as they resist Russian occupation.

Macho man Putin regards the West as decadent. Enfeebled by its preoccupation with human rights, LBGTQ+ and identity politics. It is time to make clear to him that concern for minorities is not a sign of weakness but of strength. That Europe is more than an alliance of material self-interest.

The world has changed in the past week. But we have been here before. Western leaders would do well to recall John F Kennedy’s words at the start of the last Cold War. “We shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, in order to assure the survival and the success of liberty.” That worked and must again. Slava Ukraini.