Partly because of so much anniversary talk — and partly because of my colleague Chris Miller’s revealing interview with Volodymyr Zelenskyy — Ukraine is very much on my mind. What is easiest to forget is the duration of Ukrainian suffering. Four years ago, my wife and I had two very clued-up visitors to dinner on the night following Russia’s invasion. These were Radek Sikorski, now Poland’s foreign minister, and Anne Applebaum, who has written acclaimed books on Stalin’s gulag and the Ukrainian famine (they are married). Our conversation was mostly about the war, although it was too soon to have a good sense of how it would unfold. Zelenskyy had not yet made his Churchillian appeal for America to send “ammunition not a ride”, which he did the next day. The likely fate of Russia’s farcical and disastrous Kyiv convoy was a couple of weeks from view. As far as most of us knew, Kyiv would rapidly succumb to an invasion that Trump had already deemed “genius”. Being Polish, Sikorski was both more bullish about Ukraine’s resolve and far better informed than the consensus. Either way, that evening seems a long time ago.