While the necessity of supporting Ukraine, at all costs, should be obvious to all (it’s the best long-term investment the West can make against an expansionist Russia), it is a hard sell to electorates. But there is another way of doing this — we can make Putin pay. Even the populists in Europe and the U.S. would struggle to argue with that.

The West holds $400bn of Russian assets, either frozen or immobilized For comparison, all Western aid so far, including financial, humanitarian, and military, totals about $350bn.