Not content with bankrolling Vladimir Putin’s war machine through their dependence on Russian energy, astonishingly, some European countries have actually been arming the Kremlin. Even after the EU imposed an arms embargo following the illegal annexation of Crimea in 2014, France and Germany shipped weaponry worth an estimated €300 million to Moscow. These included “bombs, rockets, torpedoes and explosives” from France, some of which could have been used against Ukraine, and guns and special protection vehicles from Germany. Since many of the goods were described as “dual use”, they could circumvent the export ban.

The fact that Germany has so lavishly endowed Putin’s military is particularly galling, because of its reticence to send weapons to Ukraine. But it is hardly surprising. Germany, under successive chancellors, made a calamitous misjudgment by assuming that closer co-operation with the Kremlin would help to restrain Putin’s worst impulses. Even now, after the atrocities at Bucha and promises that Berlin would change, Chancellor Olaf Scholz has been shamefully weak in his support for Kyiv.

Emmanuel Macron, for his part, may have toughened up his anti-Putin rhetoric, but he still stands accused by countries such as Poland of attempting to appease the Kremlin. Focused on the presidential election campaign, he has failed to show leadership.

The conflict is entering a new phase, a bloody assault by Russia on Donbas and perhaps even an attempt to seize the entirety of the Ukrainian coastline down to Odesa. As Boris Johnson said yesterday in India, the West cannot look on passively as Putin continues his onslaught.

Once the French presidential contest is over, European leaders will no longer have any excuse not to fall into line with the rest of the Western alliance. Germany has already trashed its reputation among many Eastern European nations, while Mr Macron’s reported desire for a grand bargain with the Kremlin has been rendered obscene by Putin’s behaviour. The EU has been at best an irrelevance, despite its pretensions to be a foreign policy superpower.

More optimistic analysts consider that Kyiv has a real chance to push back the Russian advance. While Ukrainian forces remain outnumbered, the provision of advanced armaments by Nato members has helped to shift the balance more in the defenders’ favour. But Ukraine’s prospects depend heavily on the willingness of its friends in the West to continue the supply of weaponry. Having armed Putin, it would be a moral outrage if Europe now failed to do the same for Kyiv.