Landing zone

Ukraine has witnessed horrendous Russian aggression in the weeks since Peter Ricketts wrote for you (“What Putin wants,” April). Western policymakers are focused on how far to bolster Ukraine’s military capability; how to deter the Russians from employing chemical or nuclear weapons in battle; and, if they do, how to respond. At the same time, as the Russian campaign falters and the situation on the ground moves to siege warfare or stalemate, flickers of a reduction in Moscow’s ambitions appear—perhaps a pledge of Ukrainian neutrality and a transfer of territory to form a Russian “landbridge” to Crimea will do?

Even if Moscow plays for time, the allies, with Ukraine, should think now about postwar policy. Three components will be crucial: the territorial and security settlement; the rebuilding of Ukraine, including politically; and policy towards Russia.

There is no appetite for rewarding Russia for invasion, and Ukraine will rightly resist losing territory. But the outlines are visible of an agreement comprising armed neutrality underpinned by credible external guarantees, and a status for Luhansk and Donetsk that is better for Kyiv than that in the 2014 Minsk formula. Crimea will be hard to solve. Allies and western financial institutions should prioritise helping Ukrainians to rebuild their devastated country. The EU should commit to Ukrainian membership, accompanied by the political reform that Kyiv still needs. And Russia? It depends how long the barbarism lasts and what happens inside the Kremlin. Even if Putin is deposed, finding credible interlocutors free from complicity in war crimes will not be easy. There will be no return to cordial relations. Trust, goodwill and too many links, political and economic, have been broken. Equally, indefinite Cold War-style containment, continental division and the implicit punishment of all Russians, with the risk of forcing together a broken Russia and a dominant China, would not be wise either.

A conditional resumption of a much less integrated relationship seems on the cards. The outcome will test western unity.

Pauline Neville-Jones, former chair, Joint Intelligence Committee

Flight of fancy

Jonathan Rée remarks that Richard Rorty’s critics asked: “why would Rorty ever get on a plane if he did not believe in the truth of aeronautics?” (“In praise of the pragmatic,” Jan/Feb). The critics obviously knew nothing about aeronautics. Pioneers of atmospheric flight realised from the start that trying to achieve it by means of the flawless “objective” maths of fluid dynamics wouldn’t work. As Howard Wright wrote: “the successful aeroplane, like many other pieces of mechanism, is a huge mass of compromise”; echoed by GH Bryan’s statement that “every aeroplane is to be regarded as a collection of unsolved mathematical problems.” There is no better illustration of the superiority of pragmatism over “objective truth” than aeronautics.