Glory to Ukraine! It was one of those moments when you punch the air before running round the room doing little triumphant pant-hoots of excitement.This week delegations of suckers and sycophants from 130 countries have been breaking all norms of decency and landing at the airport in St Petersburg, for a showcase conference on investment in Russia, with the climactic speech yesterday from Putin himself.Among the luminaries have been the strange perma-tanned film star Steven Seagal and the misogynistic influencer Andrew Tate, as well as some fellow from the US Commission of Fine Arts (what the hell was he doing there, by the way?).These useful idiots were just checking into their hotels, investigating the minibar, testing the bedsprings and so on, when the sirens went off. There was the crump of an explosion, and then another.They rushed outside to see a cloud of oily black smoke rising over the city, clearly visible from the Hermitage. Yes, it turned out that the Ukrainians had sent their own secret delegation to the summit – in the form of a swarm of drones.They had travelled a long way from their home country, more than 500 miles away. They had eluded Russia’s air defences. They had entered into the spirit of the occasion, by creating some entirely new and lucrative opportunities for investment in Russia.Thanks to those 60 Ukrainian drones, Steven Seagal can now bid for the contract to rebuild the St Petersburg oil depots. Andrew Tate can get down to the Kronstadt naval base, get out his apron and his dustpan and brush, and volunteer to clean up the mess.The Ukrainians managed to hit a corvette in dry dock, and damage it so badly that it won’t be sailing for months if not years. In the history of Ukrainian spectaculars, it was the most spectacular attack so far. I would love to have seen the look on Putin’s face when he got the news of the Ukrainian drone attack, writes Boris Johnson US actor Steven Seagal attends the St Petersburg International Economic Forum this week for a conference that concludes with a speech by Putin himselfI would love to have seen the look on Putin’s face when he got the news. This was meant to be his Davos, a cheerful conclave of the world’s klepto-capitalists. But no amount of free vodka is going to persuade people to invest in Russia if they think a Ukrainian drone is going to come through the window.The attack was so sensational and audacious that in the past few days people have actually started to wonder: is it possible that Ukraine could win this war?Is David about to send that pebble right between the eyes of the bewildered Goliath, so that the giant topples backwards into the dust?The Kronstadt naval base was famously the site of one of the first communist uprisings in 1917. After this military humiliation, are the Russians finally going to turn against Tsar Putin? Well, it is certainly possible – but only if the West starts to show the gumption of the Ukrainians themselves.The Ukrainian drone attacks on Putin’s oil infrastructure are astonishing, and seemingly impossible to stop, and they continue seriously to cut Russian exports of hydrocarbons.But even more strategically significant are the Ukrainian aerial attacks on the main arterial route between Russia and Crimea, along the so-called land-bridge of captured territory to the south of the country.The Ukrainian drones are hovering like lammergeiers* over these roads, and by taking out the transport trucks they are making it ever harder for the Russians to get supplies to the front. DICTIONARY CORNER *Lammergeier: The bearded vulture, a fearsome carnivore that flies high to spy food and can dissolve bones with its stomach acid This is starting to have an effect on the battle. The statistics vary according to which authority you read, but there is little doubt that the Russian assault has begun to falter. Some calculations say that in the past couple of months the Ukrainians have even regained land – and yet the Russians have still been losing about 30,000 soldiers killed or wounded every month: a horrendous butcher’s bill.All told, the Russians have lost more than one million killed or wounded (as against about 250,000 Ukrainians), and the territory they have captured in the past year amounts to diddly-squat – about 0.6 per cent of Ukrainian land-mass. It is not surprising that we are starting to hear the first mutterings of dissent from within the Russian establishment, and suggestions that it might be time to bring the ‘Special Military Operation’ to an end.What was supposed to be a three-week blitzkrieg has turned into an epic of carnage that has lasted longer than the First World War, and that has killed far more Russians than any conflict since World War Two.The closest comparison is the disastrous ten-year foray into Afghanistan. By the end the Russian public hated that war. And yet they lost around 15,000 – trivial by comparison with the bloodbath in Ukraine.There is only one obstacle to peace, and that is the man who began the war. The problem is Putin.The Russian president is terrified to end the war because he fears what might happen next: the tsar comparison is apposite. Then there is a further problem. Heavy smoke billows after Ukrainian drones hit oil depots in St PetersburgThe West is symmetrically fearful of actually helping to cause the defeat of Putin because we, too, have been perpetually nervous about what might come next.For four years Western policymakers have had a craven, superstitious and unfounded belief that an outright victory for Ukraine – and a defeat for Putin – would mean some kind of social and political collapse in Russia, and the risk of some kind of desperate reprisals.Well, it’s rubbish, and it’s high time we understood it. There is one clear and unambiguous lesson of this war so far, and that is that we have systematically overestimated Putin, and underestimated the Ukrainians.We have endlessly nickel-and-dimed our support for the Ukrainians, and we have always been too slow in giving them the kit they need. At every stage the argument has been the same – that if we do more to tool up Ukraine, we run the risk of ‘escalation’ from Putin.The argument is absurd. What more can Putin do? He is bombing civilians in their apartments, he is capturing and castrating Ukrainian men and taking Ukrainian children into captivity to unlearn their own language.I have recently been to the front line to meet Ukrainian soldiers who are fighting and dying, in wretched conditions, to hold him off. What are we waiting for?There is no conceivable excuse for delay. We could do far, far more to force Putin to bring this to an end – with a free and sovereign Ukraine. We could unfreeze the hundreds of billions of dollars of Russian assets (including about £15billion in London) and give them to Ukraine; we could help with Tomahawks and other long-range missiles; we could cripple his sanctions-busting shadow fleet of oil tankers.We have done none of this – because we are frit – fearful of an actual defeat for Vladimir Putin. We are wrong to be so apprehensive. A defeat for Putin would be a wonderful moment for a world starved of good news; a defeat for the autocrats; a defeat for Iran, for China; and the end of a pointless and cruel conflict.It really can happen – and the proof that it can happen lies in the events of the past four years. We were told they would fold in a week. Now they are bombing Putin’s home city. They are going to win. We just need the guts to help them win faster.