It’s surprising just how quickly politicians ask when civilians on both sides to find an answer when politicians created the problem in the first place and not civilians.

Helmut Schmidt, a Social Democrat West German Chancellor, possibly exasperated, reportedly said Russia was the “Third World with missiles”. It highlighted the vulnerability to economic pressure, ill-matched with high-end technology, including war technology and the world’s largest nuclear arsenal. It might take nervous awareness of that danger and hard times to bring civilians on both sides – whether Russians with no money, Europeans unable to get fuel for the last weeks of winter – to bring on the pressure, if only they can, to end the conflict.

Source: Ukraine: Three decades after the Cold War, back to open conflict