On stage

DN

Dominic Nicholls

Moderator · The Telegraph

BJ

Boris Johnson

former UK Prime Minister

GM

Gen. H.R. McMaster

former U.S. National Security Advisor

SV

Sergey Vysotskiy

NAUDI

MK

Michael Kofman

Carnegie Endowment

The flagship panel debated the definition of Ukrainian victory, Europe's slowness to rearm, and the future European security architecture. Johnson pressed for releasing ~$250bn of frozen Russian assets and a "coalition of the willing"; McMaster argued Putin is driven by obsession and will not stop until convinced he is losing; Kofman assessed that a multinational division could be deployed if the political will existed; Vysotskiy said Ukraine's industry has spare capacity and needs procurement financing, not just investment. Reliance on Chinese components and the role of multi-year contracts to industry featured prominently.

The substance

Key takeaways

1

Boris Johnson repeatedly steered the discussion to one lever — the roughly $250 billion of frozen Russian assets held up in Belgium via Euroclear — insisting Putin has a money problem while Ukraine has a manpower problem, and that releasing that "huge wall of money" would shift both Ukraine's capabilities and Putin's psychology.

2

McMaster distilled his thesis to a single sentence — "he won't stop until he is stopped" — and argued Putin is provoked by perceived weakness, not aggrieved by NATO; he recounted rolling out a timeline chart in the Oval Office in 2017 showing how displays of weakness (the unenforced 2013 Syria red line) preceded Russian aggression, which is how he says Trump was persuaded to send Javelins.

3

Michael Kofman (Carnegie) argued the "coalition of the willing" should really be tested as a coalition of the capable: European militaries could deploy something like a multinational division to Ukraine now, but it would require trade-offs against NATO regional-defence plans — and he warned that waiting for a ceasefire is self-defeating because ceasefires with Russia reliably break down, forcing repeated deploy-and-withdraw cycles.

4

Sergey Vysotskiy (NAUDI) upended the standard "Ukraine needs investment to scale" framing: his association's plants run at only 20–50% of capacity, and having self-funded the relocation of 250,000 tons of equipment and building 20+ new facilities, what they need is procurement (financing of the final product, Danish-model), not equity — and he claimed Ukrainian systems deliver 80–90% combat-availability versus 15–20% for some NATO kit that must be shipped to Poland for maintenance.

5

Kofman offered the deceptively simple fix everyone already knows: multi-year contracts to industry, because no company builds a new production line for a war that might end next year — while McMaster closed by insisting China should not be discounted, arguing it is effectively fighting a proxy war against Europe through Russia.

In their words

Key quotes

“

I believe Ukraine should have the whole of its 1991 borders. That's what I think. That's victory.

Boris Johnson

“

He won't stop until he is stopped, because he's driven by that obsession.

H.R. McMaster

“

Many European armies would have been off the battlefield in the first weeks of this war — either out of men, munitions, or equipment.

Michael Kofman

“

The only way of dealing with Russia is to begin one's conversation with shoving the shovel in his face.

Sergey Vysotskiy

Full transcript

The complete transcript of this session is being prepared for publication after a review pass.

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