The west needs to take on Putin at his own information game

The Ukrainians have (again) done what nobody believed they could. They have (again) defeated the supposedly mighty Russia on the battlefield, and shown up the underlying incompetence and moral rot of the Putin system.

- Peter Pomerantsev

It took them just six days to take back whole swathes of territory in north-eastern Ukraine that it took Russia six months to conquer. The Russian military, political and propaganda elites are all blaming each other: rifts that usually rumble under the surface are now visible to all. Putin looks shaken.

Now it's time for us to act as well. Not just by increasing help to Ukraine on the battlefield, but also by advancing along the other fronts in this conflict: energy, information, finance and diplomacy.

Whether we like it or not, Putin is attacking us. We can feel Putin's weapons waged against us every day. Putin is using energy blackmail to raise the cost of living, trying to bankrupt our businesses and hurt the most vulnerable parts of society. His use of cyber-attacks, assassinations, corruption and disinformation campaigns is well documented. Last week, new intelligence dumps from the US revealed he has spent $300m financing political movements in the west, largely on the far right.

He is doing this because he wants a new world where he and others like him can act with impunity. But his opportunities are also his vulnerabilities.