With its subdued condemnation of Russia’s assault on Ukraine, Israel has failed to strike a just balance between morality and realpolitik. Given that Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett has refused even to meet with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, the leader of another occupied nation, his effort to serve as a peace broker can hardly be taken seriously. It is an attempt to make up for his government’s own moral shortcomings. While India and America’s friends in the Arab world have also used the pretext of ‘mediation’ to avoid taking sides, they do not share Israel’s pretensions to be ‘a light unto the nations’.

Israel is by far the most favoured US ally in the Middle East, if not the world. Whenever Israel has needed a great power to come to its rescue—such as in the October 1973 war—it has relied not on Russia but on the United States. Its dependence on US support is overwhelming, and its access to the most advanced US weaponry is unequalled, even among America’s NATO allies. Without US backing, Israel wouldn’t have reached the momentous peace agreements that it now has with key Arab powers.

To be sure, Israel voted for the United Nations resolution condemning Russia, and it has sent considerable humanitarian aid to the Ukrainians. But it has refused to criticise Russia publicly or complement the humanitarian assistance with defensive materiel. It even initially denied Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s request to speak before the Knesset lest it inflame Putin’s anger. Apparently, Russia’s green light for Israel to strike Iranian military targets in Syria is more important than standing with the US and Europe to oppose Russian President Vladimir Putin’s reckless, criminal behaviour.

Surely there are other ways to deal with Iran. One would hope so, because the current strategy hasn’t even worked. Israel’s incessant attacks on Iranian facilities in Syria have neither cut off Iran’s Lebanese proxy, Hezbollah, nor compelled Iran to change its behaviour. Now that Iran is on the cusp of securing a nuclear deal that would be weaker than the original Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, a shift from confrontation to diplomacy would seem to be in order. There is no reason to think that doing more of the same will suddenly yield different results.

Moreover, Israel doesn’t owe Putin anything. By allowing the Israeli Air Force to operate freely in Syria, Putin has been able to outsource the task of limiting Iran’s presence in a country that he wants Russia to dominate. Russian–Iranian relations have hardly been on solid ground lately. Most recently, Russia has hindered the signing of the new nuclear deal as retaliation against US sanctions, and conservatives in Iran have criticised the Iranian regime for carrying water for Putin by abstaining from the UN resolution vote.

With Russian attacks on Ukrainian civilians becoming more appalling by the day, the Israeli government’s attempt to straddle the fence has become untenable and indefensible. Ukraine’s heroic Jewish president, Zelensky, has made direct appeals, in Hebrew, to the Jewish people, and Israelis should know more than anyone what it means to be subjected to a strategy of annihilation. Ukraine is a brave democracy resisting the onslaught of an autocracy—precisely the predicament that Israel always claimed to be in during its past wars with Arab countries.

It is worth remembering that Israel refused to consider the nuclear option even during the Yom Kippur War, when its very existence was hanging in the balance. How can the same country remain silent after Russia has explicitly raised the nuclear threat in what is clearly a war of choice? How can this refuge for Holocaust survivors accept Putin’s vile use of the term ‘Nazi’ to describe Zelensky—whose own relatives fought Hitler’s forces and died at their hands? How can a country whose enemies target its civilians not say a word about Russia doing the same in Ukraine?

Israel’s leaders need to pick a side. The choice should be easy. It is between Russia’s tactical acceptance of the Israeli Air Force’s freedom of operation in Syria and Israel’s strategic, long-term moral and political alliance with the US and the West. Israel also needs to recognise the war in Ukraine for what it is: a watershed event that is bound to reshape America’s global priorities. Western containment of Russia will now need to be applied beyond Europe, including in the Middle East. The US has every right to expect that Israel will align with it fully.

If Israel’s government needs any more convincing, it should note that even Turkey’s authoritarian president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, has picked a side. Turkey has been an erratic NATO member, purchasing not only Western arms but also advanced S-400 surface-to-air missile systems from Russia. Yet despite the country’s proximity to Russia and dependence on Russian oil and gas, it has unequivocally condemned the invasion and supplied the Ukrainians with arms. Turkish drones have proven to be the most effective weapon the Ukrainians have against Russian tanks.

Israelis tend to see all their wars as ‘existential’ and ethical considerations as luxuries they can’t afford. But there are times when morality and realpolitik align. Israeli leaders should remember that their country’s democracy is a strategic asset. Being an unequivocal member of the democratic front that is resisting Ukraine’s destruction will yield far more dividends than neutrality ever could.

The Russian invasion of Ukraine and the military coup in Myanmar 12 months earlier are two very different conflicts—one involves a nuclear superpower invading a foreign state, while the other was an internal power grab in a developing country that is no stranger to military rule—but in one respect they are exceedingly similar.

Both actions were calamitous strategic mistakes directed by autocratic leaders who became isolated and surrounded by yes-men while the world around them changed—Ukraine since 1991 and Myanmar since 2011.

Due to a bunker mentality, these leaders—President Vladimir Putin in Russia and Senior General Min Aung Hlaing in Myanmar—hadn’t noticed the colossal social changes taking place and therefore became deluded about how military action would play out.

Both men expected an easy victory, followed by the quick consolidation of power and control, but in both cases they discovered that the opposition to their plans was much fiercer, more steadfast and more pervasive than they expected.

In Myanmar, half a century of military rule was followed in 2011 by a decade of political and economic reforms. After many years of oppressive censorship, there was a flourishing of independent media. Trade unions were legalised, a minimum wage was instituted and living standards improved for much of the country.

In September 2014, two private telecommunication companies entered the Myanmar market, reducing the price of a SIM card from around US$1,000 to $1.50 almost overnight. Internet penetration increased almost instantly from around 2% of the population to more than 60%, and Facebook became the dominant platform for media and communication in the country.

Unfortunately, this explosion of social media access was accompanied by a significant campaign of disinformation and hate speech related to the Muslim Rohingya ethnic minority. In 2017, a pogrom by the Myanmar military, led by Min Aung Hlaing, resulted in around 740,000 refugees pouring into neighbouring Bangladesh.

This same military, which has been in civil war with various ethnic armed groups for decades, then used spurious claims of election fraud to remove the government led by Aung San Suu Kyi in February 2021, after it was re-elected in a landslide in November 2020.

The Myanmar military lives in an isolated and paranoid world, rarely mixing with civilians and often with little outside information to counter the propaganda it is fed. Min Aung Hlaing and the rest of the military leadership have accumulated enormous wealth from military-owned businesses and live palatial but isolated lives in an enclave at the base of a mountain on the edge of the bizarre capital, Naypyitaw, which is itself insulated from the rest of the country.

A military junta had ruled Myanmar until 2011 and Min Aung Hlaing, surrounded by compliant and subservient subordinates, clearly anticipated that the population, having long suffered under military rule, would be placidly resigned to returning to that state.

Unfortunately for him, the people of Myanmar had tasted freedoms that much of the rest of the world enjoyed and demonstrated that they were in no mood for acquiescing.

Young people had spent a decade experiencing liberties that their parents could only have dreamed of. The prospect of losing those freedoms, as well as dreams of future education and opportunities, resulted in a white-hot anger and fury directed at the military junta that won’t be easily extinguished.

Further complicating matters is that the people from these groups form the most likely candidates for military opposition to the junta. As a result, ‘people’s defence forces’ have formed, often with training from ethnic armed groups. Ongoing assassinations and ambushes against the military mean it has little effective control over much of the country.

In Russia, Putin has been similarly isolated from changes in society. He is clearly incredibly rich, but it’s impossible to know with any certainty what assets he owns or controls. Nevertheless, through this wealth and his increasing paranoia, demonstrated in part by the oversized tables at which he now conducts meetings, he has little insight into the societal changes that have taken place in recent years in Russia and, more importantly, in Ukraine.

He and his inner circle of security advisers are largely the products of Soviet-era politics and society who pine for a return to ‘traditional’ social and political values. They have clearly followed a revanchist policy towards Ukraine, harking back to both the Soviet and Russian imperial eras, most obviously through the annexation of Crimea but also with the current invasion, the goal of which is to return Ukraine to little more than a vassal state.

Even within this inner circle, however, Putin feels the need to chasten some of his closest allies. The televised display of fealty and humiliation during a recent security council meeting was clearly designed to demonstrate that he is more than first among equals.

Unfortunately for Putin, his isolation and a clear lack of dissenting advisers have led him to make a massive strategic error. Ukraine has changed since 1991. Twice in the past two decades—in 2005 and 2014—popular movements have removed Russian-backed leaders who tried to steal elections.

In 2019, the election of Volodymyr Zelensky as president brought the curtain down on a succession of largely kleptocratic and autocratic presidents. He is now demonstrating his mettle as a wartime leader, which is providing courage and unity of purpose across much of Ukraine.

Regardless of the trajectory of the war—which in the north at least is not going anywhere near close to plan for Russia—Putin cannot win.

Putin and Russia may partially win militarily, by grinding down the resistance and inflicting huge civilian casualties, but they will lose, ruinously, both politically and economically.

For both Min Aung Hlaing and Putin, there are now no good options. Both leaders have blundered into conflicts with oppositions they neither respected nor understood. Both are now paying the price of their huge miscalculations, although as always it is the citizens who will bear most of the costs.

The lesson for political leaders across the world is clear: suppressing dissenting advice may have short-term benefits, but in the long term it can lead to catastrophic errors.

China and Russia may be allies in autocracy, but their attitudes towards engagement with the global economy could not be more different.

Whereas Vladimir Putin has devoted the past 20 years to making Russia’s economy as bulletproof as he can, China has pursued as much growth as globalisation can deliver.

Announcing China’s 2022 growth target of 5.5% over the weekend, Premier Li Keqiang underlined the Chinese Communist Party’s continuing commitment to the open world markets that are being slammed shut to China’s Russian ally.

China would continue to pursue its Belt and Road Initiative and would ‘deepen multilateral and bilateral economic and trade cooperation’, he said.

While the international outlook was ‘increasingly volatile, grave and uncertain’, Li saw foreign investment as an important contributor to China’s domestic economic growth. ‘The vast, open Chinese market is sure to provide even greater business opportunities for foreign enterprises in China,’ he said.

For China’s rulers, history is marked by extended periods of chaos and revolution. Governing the largest population in the world has been difficult for millennia. The sharpest focus of the communist dynasty has been on the ‘century of humiliation’, when foreign powers occupied the banks of the Huangpu River in Shanghai and imposed their will on the fading Qing dynasty, after which vast reaches of China were occupied by invading Japanese forces.

The CCP sees elevated levels of economic growth as the guarantee of social and political stability. Xiang Dong, deputy head of the Research Office of the State Council, commented on the growth target:

Stable economic conditions act as the basis. If the economy turned unstable, employment and people’s incomes would be hard to stabilize, while risks and ‘landmines’ could manifest themselves.

Achieving economic growth of around 5.5 percent will lay the foundation for expanding employment and raising incomes, making sure that the economy continues to stay within a reasonable range.

For Putin, the object lessons guiding his economic policy have been the chaos in which Russia found itself after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, followed by the repeated imposition of economic sanctions by the West in response to Russian aggression towards former Soviet states.

Russian inflation hit 874% in 1993 and it was still at 88% in 1999, the year Putin was appointed prime minister. Russia faced economic collapse in 1998, defaulting on its international debts with soaring unemployment. Over the first eight years of its post-Soviet life, the economy contracted 30%.

Putin was helped by the oil price. It rose from a 1998 low of just US$20 a barrel to US$50 a barrel by 2000 and then, with some volatility, continued rising to a zenith of just under US$180 a barrel in 2008. While the global financial crisis hurt, the oil price has generally remained above US$60, except for a brief pandemic plunge back to US$20.

The Russian government didn’t squander its petro-dollars, running a tight budget balance and building up reserves. Debt was paid off. Many of the assets handed to oligarchs on the break-up of the Soviet Union were renationalised.

Russia first started to feel the pressure of sanctions in 2008, following its invasion of Georgia and then, again, in 2014 following its invasion of Crimea and backing for separatist movements in Ukraine’s Donbas region.

Russia responded with efforts to make its economy as sanction-proof as possible. Building up large foreign exchange reserves was part of that effort; it was not anticipated that those funds could be frozen.

There were further rounds of US sanctions in 2018 following the use of military nerve agent in an attempted assassination in the UK of former spy Sergei Skripal and also over the Russian interference in the 2016 US election. It was following those moves that Russia sold its holdings of US Treasury bonds.

While China was out to exploit every advantage that membership of the World Trade Organization could possibly bring it, Russia was focused on selling oil, gas, specialist metals, wheat and a few other commodities, locking in its customers as effectively as it could.

Russia gained membership of the WTO in 2012 but has been a relatively passive member. Its only free-trade agreements are with Vietnam, Serbia, Singapore and Iran, and those are through the Eurasian Economic Union, a body it sponsored to drive trade with former Soviet states like Belarus and Kyrgyzstan.

Contrast that with the hyperactive trade diplomacy of China, pushing the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership, joining a Singapore-led digital trade initiative, pushing to join the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership, and seeking an investment agreement with the European Economic Union. It also has 16 bilateral free-trade deals and is negotiating a further eight.

Russia is engaged in globalisation, but as a provider of commodities sold on open markets for which there’s global need, particularly in Europe and China.

Economic historian Adam Tooze, whose depth of knowledge of the Russian economy makes his commentary an indispensable reference during the Ukraine crisis, argues that far from pursuing growth, Putin operated an austerity campaign to strengthen state finances, with the budget swinging from a large deficit to a substantial surplus over the past four years.

Since 2009, Russia has averaged growth rates of only around 0.8%, less than half the growth of other Eastern European nations and below the advanced nation average.

Growth and prosperity, which are fundamental for China, are subordinated to order and resilience in Russia.

It’s too soon to tell how successful Russia’s attempts to insulate its economy from Western sanctions will prove. Russian authorities have the latitude to respond to the sanctions with a generous stimulus package if they can break from their parsimonious instincts; however, there are suggestions that the Russian motor industry and its airlines will grind to a halt over coming months because of lack of access to Western technology.

Beijing will be cautious about breaching Western sanctions on Russia. It has far too much to lose. China wants to continue to profit from globalisation in an increasingly isolationist age.

The Ukraine conflict has moved into uncharted territory as the EU and US spearhead maximum-damage sanctions against the Russian economy, while the Kremlin raises nuclear-readiness levels and launches rocket strikes against civilian targets in Ukrainian cities.

As the situation deteriorates, analysts in Washington and Brussels will parse China’s statements for clues as to what role it might play in the conflict, especially in light of the ‘no limits’ relationship announced by leaders Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin at the beginning of February.

Their 5,000-word statement expanded on the theme that Russia and China now share a fundamental worldview that is against the expansion of both NATO and liberal democracy. And yesterday, China’s foreign minister, Wang Yi, affirmed that the Russia–China partnership will endure and grow, ‘however precarious and challenging the international situation may be’.

Does this mean China will enable the Russian war effort? Will it try to use its relationship to persuade the Kremlin to de-escalate? Or will Xi attempt to distance China from the crisis as it gets uglier, waiting to see who retains the advantage? The nuanced opaqueness of China’s statements and actions since the invasion leaves open all three possibilities, at least in theory.

And that is precisely Beijing’s intention, said Chinese international relations professors Yang Cheng and Shi Yinhong in an interview with China’s Central News Agency. They said that on Ukraine, China was pursuing a delicate balance between its growing strategic and economic relationship with Russia on one hand and maintaining key economic relationships on the other. This understanding of China’s position as one of ‘pro-Russia neutrality’ is shared by many Western analysts.

Yang and Shi argue that China has conveyed its message to Russia in the nuances and that Putin will understand that China doesn’t necessarily approve of his actions but won’t intervene to stop him. Yang goes on to say that China believes its balancing act will get it through this crisis without damaging its relations with major Western markets.

Last week, US security officials shared intelligence with the New York Times indicating that the Chinese government was aware of Putin’s invasion plans, asked Russia not to proceed until after the Beijing Winter Olympics and said China wouldn’t interfere. It’s unclear at what level that dialogue took place.

But given the warm personal relationship between Xi and Putin, it’s highly unlikely that this was unknown to Xi, even if much of the Chinese government was caught unawares by the invasion. Again according to US intelligence, Chinese officials repeatedly rebuffed attempts by the Biden administration to share intelligence on Russia’s invasion plans, before briefing Russian counterparts on what they believed to be a piece of US information warfare.

It looks likely that Russia’s plans for Ukraine were very closely held in both Moscow and Beijing. According to reports from Russian journalists with Kremlin sources, many government officials there thought Putin merely intended to formally annex the territories it effectively took in 2014. It’s possible US intelligence knew more than the vast majority of senior officials in either country.

If Xi didn’t know, his ignorance would be embarrassing given China’s presumed closeness with Russia. But perhaps both he and Putin expected it to play out as it did with Russia’s occupation of Crimea and Donbas in 2014—low levels of resistance allowing a swift decapitation of Ukraine’s political apparatus, followed by more irksome but not disastrous sanctions and hand-wringing from the West which Russia would be prepared to ride out.

In other words, Xi might have thought that Western political systems, weakened in part by the hybrid warfare that Russia has been levelling against the West for over a decade, would be unable to respond effectively. Russia’s war would be another drain on the confidence of Western states and alliances, another defeat for democracy.

But Putin has triggered a very different scenario for which both countries seem much less prepared. Determined resistance in Ukraine and the swiftness with which NATO and global civil society have come together to isolate Russia economically and politically present new dilemmas for Beijing that will push its foreign policy beyond neat diplomatic formulas.

Is Xi now happy with the pace of geopolitical destabilisation that Russia—the junior partner on almost every metric save nuclear weapons—has now set? Does he really understand the scope of Putin’s ambitions and the significance of the line Russia just crossed by invading a European country with conventional military force backed with nuclear threats? How many geopolitical assumptions will need to be rethought? And what value does Russia have now as a strategic partner?

In the short term, Beijing will need to decide how, as Moscow’s closest strategic partner, it will handle Russia’s political and economic isolation, as international outrage and disgust at Putin’s invasion and continuing escalation of the war reaches fever pitch.

The UN Human Rights Council walkout In the middle of a speech by Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, the overwhelming General Assembly vote against Russia and the World Bank and International Monetary Fund’s US$5.2 billion support package for Ukraine shows that Moscow has decisively lost the information war.

EU economic giants like Germany, so critical for the success of China’s Belt and Road Initiative, have already signalled that they want more from China than Russia-inflected neutrality. Just before the war began, German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock warned that if China tolerates a Russian invasion of Ukraine, Berlin ‘cannot have normal relations’ with Beijing. And given the increased relevance of Baltic states to EU security, China’s attempts to bankrupt Lithuania over its relationship with Taiwan will appear in an even poorer light now.

There’s every indication that atrocities and nuclear tensions will escalate as Russia attempts to eliminate Ukraine’s civilian resistance and force a victory before sanctions affect the war effort. China’s failure to condemn Russia and its repeated calls for ‘diplomacy’ without any action make its attempts to project neutrality on the conflict extremely unconvincing—especially when it’s running a pro-Putin campaign so enthusiastically inside its borders.

Worryingly for China, the courage of Ukrainians fighting for their sovereignty provides a huge boost to pro-democracy forces everywhere. All over the globe, civil society—always a blind spot for authoritarians—has mobilised in support of Ukraine, as evidenced by the massive street protests and flood of support to refugees.

Entities as diverse as MI6, Europe’s classical music concert halls and the iconic 101 skyscraper in Taipei have displayed Ukraine’s flag, and a kind of spontaneous global citizens’ defence movement against the Putin regime is emerging. This includes hacker groups like Anonymous and members of what Bellingcat founder Eliot Higgins calls the global open-source intelligence community fighting back against Russian disinformation in real time, as well as ex-military personnel from across the world volunteering to fight.

In contrast, Russia’s trajectory towards an impoverished, unstable and isolated future dents the faux-populist pulling power of autocracies whose main attraction is the projection of national strength and stability in uncertain times. And an important diplomatic and strategic asset for Russia and China, Putin’s mystique as a geostrategic grandmaster, an avatar for aspiring dictators and autocrats, and a key strategic asset for Russia, may be fading because of his brutal Ukraine miscalculation.

Moscow’s propagandists will continue to reach out to admirers of authoritarianism in the EU and US. And Russia and China will try to counter reality by continuing to promote a narrative of Russia as a victim of Western aggression, particularly when sanctions hit Russian citizens, something that many in the international community feel justifiably uncomfortable about. But victimhood is a hard sell as Russian atrocities in Ukraine multiply.

All of this makes Russia diplomatic dead weight for China to the extent that it is trying reshape the global order in its own image. A key part of China’s strategy in international institutions has been to try to capitalise on perceptions of political instability in the US, especially when Donald Trump was president, and the resulting alliance fractures to position Russia and China as the stronger and more durable great powers. But influencing the international order is much harder when your main ally has become a complete pariah not only in diplomatic institutions, but in the sporting and cultural realms as well. In pursuing its own geopolitical ambitions, China can ill afford to be pulled into Russia’s reputational black hole.

Military and humanitarian aid sent by friendly countries is reaching Ukrainians fighting the invading Russian forces, says the head of Ukraine’s diplomatic mission in Australia, Volodymyr Shalkivskyi.

Many countries, including Australia, have offered aid to Ukraine, raising the question of whether, given the heavy fighting, it can reach the troops and the civilians who need it.

Shalkivskyi responds in an ASPI interview that Ukrainians are grateful for the world’s fast response. Poland serves as a gateway for these supplies, which are then transported through western Ukraine to other regions, he says.

He warns that much now depends on whether Russian President Vladimir Putin can pressure his close ally, Belarus’s Alexander Lukashenko, to use his country’s forces to cut those western supply lines.

‘I believe that he’s under tremendous pressure from Putin to get it done, and Mr Lukashenko depends 100% on Putin.’ Shalkivskyi says he hopes Belarusian forces will not intervene officially, though some are reportedly already in Ukraine.

‘In case the Belarusian army officially rolls into our territory, of course it will be challenging to us, but we will prevail. We will sustain this pressure and we will fight back.’

Shalkivskyi believes Putin is adapting his strategy as he encounters much tougher opposition than expected. His initial idea was to control all of Ukraine after a quick military campaign and then to install a pro-Russian government. An option for Putin now might be to establish a second capital in eastern Ukraine and declare it a new country. That would require a very large Russian occupation force, which, given Russia’s heavy bombing campaign, would face strong resistance from Ukrainian citizens, even Russian-speaking citizens and those of Russian ethnicity.

There’s a significant minority of ethnic Russians living in eastern Ukraine, where much of the fighting is underway, says Shalkivskyi. ‘But we see how local communities react when the Russian troops are entering the villages, the towns, that they’re supporting our military, that they’re supporting territorial defence forces, because simply they do not want to align with the Kremlin, with Putin.’

Putin might capture a Ukrainian city, declare it a capital and install a puppet government, Shalkivskyi says. But then they’d have to keep that area under control and that would require hundreds of thousands of troops. ‘I doubt that they have such resources.’

While Russia has so far admitted to suffering close to 500 casualties among its attacking forces, Shalkivskyi says Ukraine believes the numbers are much higher and the Russians have lost more than 5,000 personnel. Conditions on the ground mean it’s hard to be certain. He says Ukraine has lost more than 1,000 members of its military and about 350 civilians, including 16 children.

Shalkivskyi says Ukraine has taken at least 200 Russian prisoners. Some of them have said they were told they were taking part in a military exercise and didn’t know they’d find themselves in a real war. ‘They were told that this is exercises, military exercises, or that they’re going to liberate Ukraine and people will greet them with flowers, but instead people greeted them with Molotov cocktails. So, it’s a big surprise to them. Some of them are just prefer to give up.’

Ukrainian authorities have also captured Russians who arrived as spies or saboteurs. Some of those pretending to be Ukrainians were unmasked because they couldn’t pronounce more complex words in the local language. Regular Russian troops who’d run out of supplies stole food and fuel from Ukrainian shops and petrol stations.

Ukraine’s forces are heavily outnumbered, says Shalkivskyi, but morale remains high and they are determined to keep fighting. Russia has air superiority, but armed drones provided to Ukraine by Turkey have proved effective in striking Russian armoured columns.

American intelligence on Russia’s intentions in the lead-up to the invasion proved very accurate and Ukraine relies on that flow of information continuing because it doesn’t have access to its own satellite surveillance.

Now that Putin has raised the level of preparedness of Russia’s nuclear forces, is he likely to use a nuclear weapon if his attack on Ukraine goes badly?

‘I hope not,’ says Shalkivskyi, ‘but I cannot say that he’s a mentally stable person or that you can apply normal logic to his actions. So it’s really difficult to comment.’

Shalkivskyi says his embassy has received many calls from Australians wanting to help in many ways. Some want to send money, some offer to host refugees, a truck driver wants to help transport humanitarian aid and a medically trained person wants to help treat casualties in hospitals. And yes, some want to go to Ukraine and take up arms, he says. Shalkivskyi tells them that they must be sure they will not breach Australian laws in doing so.

Some countries, including the UK, Denmark and Latvia, have said their citizens can go to Ukraine to fight, Shalkivskyi says. ‘But again, there are different ways to help Ukraine. It is not only about fighting with weapons. You can assist with the simple help on the ground with humanitarian aid.’