Niall Ferguson

The United States has supported you, but you need to lock in

what you've got and then build it, rebuild it.

And then you'll be able to show, because on the other side of the line, there'll be continued Putinism, kleptocracy, criminality, poverty.

And on the Western side, there'll be the European South Korea.

which I think is not an unrealistic vision given the talent there is in Ukraine, given what they've shown themselves capable of, incredible courage, incredible innovative energy.

I'm a passionate supporter of Ukraine's bid for freedom, passionate supporter.

I do not want to see it fail because Europeans set too high a bar in these negotiations.

I believe if you can get a breathing space

Two things will happen.

First, Ukraine can begin to rebuild.

It now has a formidable army, the biggest in Europe, and it has shown itself to have formidable military technology.

Now take that and scale it in Germany.

If the Germans today... Friedrich Merz, are you listening?

did Operation Warp Speed for rearmament instead of what they are doing, which is going through the usual incredibly slow bureaucracy of procurement.

If they just did, okay, Gigafactory in Brandenburg, we take Ukrainian drone designs, and we don't just do 3 million a year, we do 20 million a year.

How about that, Putin?

Now, if the Germans did that...

And they could do it.

They have the manufacturing infrastructure.

They have the workforce.