Two embattled countries face similar threats with similar difficulties

From Kyiv to Taipei is 5,000 miles (8,000km). Yet geopolitically, Ukraine and Taiwan are closely linked, writes Edward Lucas. Their biggest shared problem is legitimacy. Russia does not regard Ukraine as a proper country. Vladimir Putin dismissed it as a mere collection of territories in 2008. His cod-historical essay, published in 2021, argued for "historical unity" between Russia and Ukraine, based on a wilful misreading of the history of Kyivan Rus.

Similarly, as seen from Beijing, Taiwan is a rebel province, unfinished business from the civil war that ended on the mainland in 1949. Talk of independence for the self-governing island arouses fury. For their part, the Taiwanese authorities still maintain the decades-old fiction that their formal name is the "Republic of China." But they have long dropped talk of "bandits in temporary control of the mainland,"" which I remember from my teenage years listening to the splenetic shortwave broadcasts of "Voice of Free China".

The Ukrainian government is now trapped by its own uncompromising—and increasingly indefensible—policy writes Dr Anatol Lieven.

Clear differences are emerging within the Ukrainian government as to whether Ukraine should make the reconquest of Crimea a nonnegotiable goal of its war effort or be prepared to trade at least provisional Russian control of the peninsula for Russian concessions elsewhere. This issue also has the potential to create a deep split between Kyiv and Western governments, which fear that Crimea and control of the strategically vital military base of Sevastopol might be the point on which Moscow would be willing to escalate toward nuclear war. The question is becoming more urgent as Ukraine prepares for an offensive that could potentially allow it to cut the land route between Russia and Crimea.