Ukraine needs our help more than ever against evil Putin, so why are USA and Germany so shamefully losing their bottle?

We’re at the useful idiot stage of the Ukraine war.

That’s the moment when supposedly intelligent people expose themselves as easily manipulated, hideously gullible propaganda tools so that evil can prosper.

Take Pink Floyd rock star Roger Waters, who inexplicably addressed the UN Security Council this week to condemn the ‘provocateurs in the strongest possible terms.’

He wasn’t talking about Vladimir Putin and his genocidal barbarians - he was talking about those who had supposedly ‘provoked’ Putin into illegally invading a sovereign democratic country and slaughtering tens of thousands of innocent people.

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‘The only sensible course of action today is to call for an immediate ceasefire in Ukraine,’ said Waters, who appeared at the invitation of Russia, and wouldn’t know a sensible course of action if it smacked him over his deluded, blinkered head.

Ukraine’s ambassador to the UN promptly lambasted him, saying: ‘How sad for his former fans to see him accepting the role of just a brick in the wall, a wall of Russian disinformation and propaganda.’

I’d have substituted the letter ‘b’ for a ‘p.’

But what a fading nutty old musical has-been says about this war is of trivial irrelevance, moronic though Waters is.

Far more disconcerting is the language currently being deployed by leaders of two major nations – Germany and America.

I sense that most dangerous of things in a war: a wobble.

The German chancellor Olaf Scholz, already so shamefully slow to supply desperately needed German battle tanks, has now rejected President Zelensky’s urgent plea for fighter jets, saying he won’t be drawn into a ‘public bidding war’ over military support for Ukraine ‘according to the principle of battle tanks, submarines, battleships, who can offer more. Germany won’t get involved.’

What a dismal response from one of Europe’s most powerful countries.

Equally disappointing was US President Biden’s decision to barely mention Ukraine in his annual State of the Union address on Tuesday night.

Last year, six days after the invasion, he devoted a large swathe of it to ripping into Putin and received lengthy and unanimous bipartisan standing ovations for his defiant rhetoric.

This year, he spent less than two minutes discussing Ukraine and when he asked whether Americans would ‘stand for the defence of democracy’ against ‘tyranny’, I was appalled to see numerous members of the US Congress declining to stand up in agreement.

Both Scholz and Biden are facing growing domestic resistance to supporting the Ukrainian war effort, but that kind of war fatigue is to be expected now it’s dragging on longer than anyone predicted.

What should not be expected is for these leaders to lose their bottle.

The fact the war is dragging on is down to Ukraine’s courageous and inspiring refusal to bow to a ruthless dictator and his invading hordes, and the only reason they’ve been able to hold out for so long is the military support the West has given them.

Britain’s led the way in Europe, and as President Zelensky told Parliament, both Boris Johnson and now Rishi Sunak deserve great credit for their unwavering commitment and support when it’s really mattered.

But now is the critical time.

Intelligence reports suggest Russia is preparing for a fresh, massive onslaught in the coming weeks to try to force victory, deploying not just conventional weaponry but rape, torture, and murder to crush the will of these remarkably resilient Ukrainians.

Despicable Putin’s even released scores of dangerous violent prison inmates to do this dirty depraved work for him with the promise of freedom if they come back alive.

As Zelensky said, this is not just a local fight between neighbours squabbling over territorial rights, this is a fight for democracy against totalitarianism.

‘Freedom will win, we know Russia will lose,’ he told Britain’s MPs - to huge cheers.

However, these things will only now happen if we give Zelensky what he is demanding.

In the end, when it comes to winning a war, positive words are meaningless compared to action.

Winston Churchill put it best: ‘It’s no use saying, “we are doing our best”, you have got to succeed in doing what is necessary.’

The West cannot afford to let Putin win this war.

If we do, he will inevitably invade other countries to continue his plan to restore the former Soviet Union he believes should never have been broken up.

To borrow Churchill’s words, for Ukraine to succeed, we must do what is necessary.

Right now, that means giving them fighter jets, and lots of them.

Zelensky presented the Speaker of the House of Commons, Sir Lindsay Hoyle, with a hero Ukrainian pilot’s helmet inscribed with the words: ‘‘We have freedom, give us wings to protect it.’

It was a powerfully evocative conclusion to a stunningly effective speech.

And to the ditherers and waverers in Germany and America, I would remind them of what Margaret Thatcher said to President George H.W. Bush when he hesitated over what action to take against Saddam Hussein after the Iraqi tyrant invaded Kuwait in 1990.

The Iron Lady took him aside and said: ‘Remember George, this is no time to go wobbly.’