LEAH Gunn Barrett (Letters, Jan 15) claims most people believe Ukraine has lost their war. I wonder how does she defines “most people”? Certainly not the Ukrainians nor, I would hope, anyone who supports a small peaceful country struggling bravely against the brutal and murderous Russian invasion (see Bucha or Mariupol or a hundred other destroyed places).

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She implies that Ukraine should just surrender and let the savage dictatorship of Vladimir Putin trample over their land, complete with executions and labour camps for those who resist. This is the same Putin who has eliminated all independent media in Russia and jailed or killed all opposition, but Ms Barrett does not even mention the Russian invasion or its barbaric government.

She also presents the strange theory that it is all a Western plot, in connivance with President Zelensky, to turn Ukraine into a puppet weapons producer. I suppose even Stalin had his “useful idiots”, as he described them, in the West.

James Duncan
Edinburgh