One year on, senior officials are pessimistic
Vladimir Putin’s armies launched their fateful attack on Ukraine a year ago today. Tanks and troops poured across the frontier in what most Western governments feared would be a lightning thrust of fratricidal violence that would throttle Ukrainian independence. Then came the resistance, Russia not only held at bay but, miraculously, thrown back. As the world looks on, expectantly, waiting for the next decisive crash of momentum, a grim pessimism has again taken hold: 2022 might have been a year of heroism, but many fear 2023 might be the year the war settles into something far more conventional — and worrying.
