How the West could help Ukraine
seeing Putin off
In this article I'll describe things the West is doing to help Ukraine, and what more it could do. I'll split it into Military and non-Military help.
Non-military aid
Trade sanctions are already ongoing. It will be harder for Russia to sell its goods and harder for it to buy specialized goods from the West (for example semiconductors).
Mineral fuels including oil: US$141.3 billion (42.1% of total exports)
Gems, precious metals: $30.4 billion (9%)
Iron, steel: $16 billion (4.8%)
Cereals: $9.5 billion (2.8%)
Machinery including computers: $8.3 billion (2.5%)
Wood: $8.2 billion (2.5%)
Fertilizers: $7 billion (2.1%)
Copper: $5.6 billion (1.7%)
Aluminum: $5.5 billion (1.6%)
Fish: $4.6 billion (1.4%)
We can hurt Russia's fuel exports in two ways: Firstly by reducing our own fuel consumption, e.g. by moving to renewable energy, by better insulating buildings, making vehicles more energy efficient, etc. And secondly by produsing lots of oil, gas and colal ourselves, flooding the market and causing the price to drop.
Cutting Russia off from international sport is also ongoing. FIFA and UEFA have banned Russian clubs and their national team from international football. This is important because while the average Russian might not pay much attention to geopolitics (in ordinary times at least), they do care about football, and other sporting and cultural activities. Making Russia a pariah state helps reduce the Putin's legitimacy in the eyes of Russians. All governments govern by inspiring a mixture of respect and fear; the less legitimacy/respect the Putin regime commands, the more it will have to govern through fear, thus reducing its popularity further.
Oligarchs' assets are being seized. For example, Alisher Usmanov's 512-foot long yacht, the Dilbar was seized by Germany. The more pain the oligarch class suffer, the less they will support Putin, and the more Putin will have to rely on naked force and fear to maintain his rule.
Further non-military aid
One very big thing that could be done is encouraging Russian soldiers to surrender/defect.
Ukraine is doing this already. Ukrainian defence minister Oleksii Reznikov is offering Russian soldiers 5,000,000 Rubles to surrender:
But the Ruble isn't worth much and likely to become worth even less. This offer could be made much better: The EU and USA should both offer, to all Russian soldiers that surrender, amnesty in their countries with a pathway to citizenship. I'm sure many Russian soldiers would rather have a happy and prosperous life as a citizen in the West (particularly as sanctions on Russia bite) than be dead fighting in Ukraine.
This offer particularly works if Russian morale is low anyway, as it appears to be. The line that Ukraine and the West should take is:
Russians have no reason to fight their cousins in Ukraine. The two countries are culturally very similar and should be friends.
Ukraine poses no threat to Russia; how can it when it is much smaller and less well armed?
Only one man wants war, Putin. He wants it because Ukraine might otherwise spread dangerous ideas of freedom and democracy into Russia.
The reason the Russian army is badly equipped (lacking GPS gear, radios, night vision goggles, etc) is that Putin and his cronies have stolen all the country's money to buy palaces and 500-foot-long yachts for themselves.
"Russian soldier, don't die for Putin's pointless war! Instead save yourself by defecting and live a good life in the West! We offer you asylum and citizenship!"
Once some Russian soldiers have surrendered, a humourous propaganda film can be made. Use a Spanish hotel as a prisoner-of-war camp and interview some of the prisoners "Hi folks back home, my name is Ivan Ivanov, I surrendered and now I'm a prisoner of war. Here's out POW camp, it's a converted Spanish hotel. Here's the view of the beach from my room. Here's the swimming pool. Here's me working on my sun tan. Here's me swimming in the pool. Here's me and my friends in the bar. It's not all fun and games though, they're teaching me Spanish. I already know how to say 'Dos cervezas, por favor'."
Alternately, use Usmanov's yacht as a POW camp and make a film there, making sure to note all the expensive decor paid for by money stolen from the Russian people. These propaganda films need to be short and humourous to maximise virality, and also to emphasize that surrendering is a good option for Russian soldiers.
If large numbers of Russian soldiers do surrender, the Russian army will be worried and will compensate by trying to keep them of a tight leash, keeping sub-units close together so they can be closely monitored, and also not allowing their soldiers much initiative. This will greatly reduce their military efficiency because top-tier militaries rely extensively on being able to spread out their units (so as not to be an easy target) and giving high levels of initiative to junior officers and NCOs.
Encouraging a coup
Only one person wants this war, Putin. The USA should put a price on his head: $1 billion for any individual or group who kills or otherwise removes him from power. To sweeten the deal, throw in fill immunity from and war crimes or crimes against humanity the coup plotters might have done in the past.
It possible that at some point Putin may order the use of nuclear weapons. This is a very serious matters, and Russians in charge of nuclear weapons don't want to die any more than anyone else. So that's a point that a coup might happen.
After Putin is depose the West must not repeat the mistake in made in 1991 following the fall of the Soviet Union. Instead it should seek to convert its former enemy into a friend, as happened with Germany and Japan after 1945. Russia should be offered a generous Marshall Plan, access to Western markets, and possibly a path to membership of the EU and NATO.
Note that if Russia did join EU and NATO, that would comprehensively put paid to any possibility of China invading Taiwan; if they did they would have the whole world against them and would lose.
Instead China would be contained for as long as it was a belligerent dictatorship, and sooner or later its elites (many of whom would have been educated in the west and have family living there) will probably decide to democratise, particularly if the alternative is sanctions that cut it off from the economic mainstream.
In this way regime change in Russia would be a massive prize for the West: it would guarantee that freedom and democracy win (yes I know that Western societies are in many ways imperfect and not fully free or democratic, but they are vastly better than places like Russia or China), and that the levels of international tension would be lower as nations would have less motive to go to war with each other.
Humanitarian aid
As the war progresses there are likely to be shortages of food, medicines and other humanitarian supplies. The EU should organise convoys to deliver them (perhaps in conjunction with the UN or red cross). Either the Russians don't prevent them from being delivered, in which case the EU wins a propaganda victory as it is delivering much needed aid to victims of Putin's aggression; or the Russians do prevent them from being delivered, in which case EU also wins a propaganda victory as Russia is committing the war crime of using starvation as a weapon.
Military aid
Many NATO and EU countries have delivered military aid to Ukraine. A lot of this has been in the form of man-portable anti-tank and anti-aircraft weapons.
Multiple-Launch Rockets
These are very useful, but on their own they are not enough to win the war. What is needed are weapons that can strike concentrations of Russian forces at a distance, say 20 to 100 km, such as multiple-launch rocket systems, a good example of which is the American M270 Multiple Launch Rocket System.
The M270 can fire a range of rockets, some guided and some unguided, with a range of up to 150 km. It normally fires a salvo of 12 rockets. It is nicknamed the "grid square removal system" due it its ability to obliterate anything within a 1 km grid square.
Targets can be acquired for these rockets either by drones, or by surveillance aircraft, or satellites. Either way, these systems would make it prohibitively expensive for the Russians to keep large numbers of troops together or to manoeuvre them effectively. This would greatly reduce their capability to mass their forces or make swift attacks, and thus greatly reduce the pace of any Russian advance.
I suggested earlier that if lots of Russian solders are surrendering the Russian leadership will want to keep them more tightly packed together; but if now Ukraine has more long-range firepower, the Russians will also need to keep them more spread out. They can't do both!
Drones
Ukraine has made good use of drones particularly the Bayraktar TB2. They could do with some more.
Fighter aircraft
Ukraine operates the MiG-29 fighter aircraft. Some EU countries such as Poland also operate this aircraft and there have been negotiations for these to be given to Ukraine and Poland to receive other aircraft (F-16s) in return. So far these negotiations haven't resulting in any aircraft being sent to Ukraine, but they may yet do so. US Vice President Kamala Harris is visiting Poland to help with the negotiations:
US Vice-President Kamala Harris has begun her trip to Poland and Romania, giving her a chance to negotiate directly with Polish leaders on the issue of fighter jet transfers to Ukraine.
The topic has exposed disagreements within the Nato alliance. On Tuesday, Poland's offer to provide the US with MiG-29 fighter jets as an intermediary step toward transferring them to Ukraine was rejected as "not tenable" by American officials.
On Wednesday afternoon, US Defence Department spokesman John Kirby was even more definitive, saying such a transfer presented a "high risk" of a Russian response that leads to a military escalation with Nato.
"We assess that adding aircraft to the Ukrainian inventory is not likely to significantly change the effectiveness of Ukrainian Air Force relative to Russian capabilities," he added.
Loads of countries have MiG-29s. E.g. India has over 100 of them. If a deal could be done to send them Ukraine, this would be very useful. The way the deal might work is Ukraine gets the miG-29s and in return India is given Western aircraft as replacements. The Dassault Rafale, might make a suitable replacement for India because (1) India already operates the Rafale, and (2) India operates the MiG-29 on aircraft carriers and Rafale is also carrier-capable.
As well as Ukraine being armed, these deals would see countries' inventories of weapons being switched from Soviet to western. This would make it harder for Russia to sell them arms in future for compatibility / familiarity reasons, harming Russia's export sales. Outside of raw materials, weapons are a big Russian export earner so this would bite.
Former USSR equipment generally
The USSR and its successor states (including Russia and Ukraine) sold lots of military aircraft worldwide; and they also sold large quantities of other military equipment. The Ukrainian armed forces are familiar with much of this equipment, and so would be very useful to replenish and augment their existing stocks. The West could buy the equipment from whoever now has it, and deliver it to Ukraine.
Summary
While the West is providing Ukraine with significant help, there’s lots more it can do to help Ukraine.
Ukraine has plenty of trained and determined soldiers, while Russian conscripts have low morale. With a sontinued flow of weapons, ammunition, and other military equipment, Ukraine can probably hold the Russians off indefinitely.
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Given the consistent position the Russians have had on border states neutrality I don't see how any Russian leader would have behaved differently than Putin. They have clear strategic reasons for not wanting Ukraine in nato. If we don't acknowledge that we can't do peace talks.