A week ago I was in Ukraine, observing a programme of work to help soldiers suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder. One ex-soldier explained to me that whenever he closes his eyes – which struck me as hauntingly dark and unmoving – he sees the faces of his fallen comrades.
His tormented mind is one of thousands among the country's citizen army that bear the mental as well as physical scars of this brutal war.
The programme is run by HopeFull, a British charity that has been making trips to Ukraine since the conflict began. It specialises in pizza trucks – driving them as close as they dare to the front lines to lift the spirits of residents, many of whom are eking out an existence in cold buildings, miles from their now destroyed homes.
Dressed in kilts woven with the blue and yellow of Ukraine, the volunteers bring a smile to young children – and even the most cynical heart could not fail to be moved by the sight of their eyes widening in amazement as they are handed a hot pizza in a box as the snow falls.
HopeFull had invited me and two parliamentary colleagues – Liberal Democrat MP Layla Moran and Labour MP Tim Roca – to witness the important work they do. We travelled extensively, coming to within a mile from the Russian border in Kharkiv.
Yet, despite the bleakness of what I saw, it was what I was told in Kyiv that rang louder alarm bells.
There, I attended a meeting of key figures from President Volodymyr Zelensky's office, politicians and members of the military, where an intelligence officer divulged to me the starkest assessment of the war I've heard yet.
This was no peripheral figure either, for so important is he to Ukraine's war effort that Vladimir Putin's agents have made several attempts on his life.
Getting straight to the point, he said: 'Ukraine is losing the war. For all the Russian losses [estimated at 1,500 soldiers a day], Ukraine is losing ground daily.'
I asked how long the country could hold on for and he replied: 'At worst, six months.'
Six months? I had heard predictions of a year or a year and a half, but by his assessment, as schoolchildren in the UK are breaking up for the summer holidays in July, Russian tanks will be smashing through Ukrainian defensive lines.
And what then? The intelligence officer wouldn't speculate but it's easy to imagine Putin's forces ploughing across the fields of eastern and central Ukraine unopposed with Kyiv in their crosshairs. Zelensky would have to negotiate a ruinous peace, cleaving his country in two, and would likely be forced into exile so the Kremlin could install a puppet government in Kyiv.
Victorious military parades would trundle through Red Square while the citizens of Ukraine face a bleak future under the jackboot of their murderous neighbour.
It's a nightmarish scenario for the West, given the vast sums spent supporting Ukraine.
But the stark truth is, we haven't spent enough.
The intelligence officer explained that his pessimistic prediction is based on his country's dwindling stocks of munitions, particularly shells for the 155mm field gun, which can hit targets 15 miles away.
Ukraine simply cannot compete. For every round that they fire, Russia fires at least four back.
While visiting an assault brigade, I could see how short of the required equipment they were.
As an ex-soldier who left the Army some 40 years ago, I was astonished to spot a 1970s British Army Ferret armoured scout car.
So desperate have the brigade become that they are tracking down and buying old ex-military equipment, modifying it and sending it into battle. Echoing in my mind was Winston Churchill's moving demand to US President Franklin Roosevelt: 'Give us the tools and we will finish the job.'
Now it is Ukraine begging us for tools.
I watched as soldiers whose chance of seeing their families again was depressingly small nonetheless ready what little equipment they had.
These once-ordinary men and women, who are fighting to keep this nascent democracy alive, are like you and I, but I wonder if people realise that their fight is ours?
Certainly in Washington, many believe it isn't. In December 2023, a handful of Conservative colleagues and I met with Republican Congressmen and women who were blocking a bill to give vital military support to Ukraine.
I was struck by how many asserted that this wasn't America's war, that their critical interests lay elsewhere in Israel and Taiwan. What they couldn't see was that the fate of Taiwan is tied to that of Ukraine.
If the West allows Kyiv to fall to the Kremlin, China will conclude that our appetite to defend democracy is small, that if we don't have the stomach to stand by our cousins on the continent, why would we come to the aid of the Taiwanese on the other side of the world? Ukraine is the shop window for Western resolve.
China's President Xi Jinping has staked huge political capital on his country's 'no limits friendship' with Russia.
He also brokered the alliance between Putin and Kim Jong Un, which has seen the latter send some 11,000 North Korean soldiers to the 'meat grinder' of the Ukrainian front line.
A victory for Russia would vindicate Xi's choice of friends and embolden his ambition for Taiwan.
This island democracy of 23 million people is claimed as Chinese by Xi, much like Ukraine is by Putin. But an invasion of Taiwan will be far costlier to the global economy than that of the Donbas has been. Some estimates have it as high as $10 trillion – not least because the island is the world's largest microchip producer, but also because the supply of Chinese-made goods that is the lifeblood of Western commerce will dwindle substantially.
It is foolish to think that what we do – or don't do – in Ukraine will not influence what happens in Taiwan. The West has learned to its great pain how not to deal with dictators – a brutal lesson of the past that our leaders today seem to be forgetting.
We thought we'd sated Hitler's territorial ambitions in Europe by offering him the German-speaking parts of Czechoslovakia, but all we did was increase his appetite for more. This will happen with Putin. If the West capitulates over Ukraine, he will simply look for what's next on the menu, as Xi will too.
Whether we like it or not, the road to Taiwan now runs right through Ukraine.
