UKRAINE'S much-heralded counter-offensive has failed. It has cost thousands of lives and expended a great deal of military equipment to capture a few destroyed villages. Experts say that Russia is likely to launch its own offensive once the mud of the autumn rains has frozen in the harsh winter. We have to accept that Ukraine is not going to win this war, and that prolonging the killing makes no sense.

Opposition to the war is growing across Europe and in the United States. Hungary has always opposed supporting Ukraine, and now Poland has stopped all military aid. The recent election in Slovakia of Robert Fico means that Slovakia, which gave Ukraine all of its Mig warplanes, will stop all funding. Anti-war movements in France, Germany and the Czech Republic have attracted millions of supporters.

In the United States opinion polls show a majority of Americans in favour of stopping funding the war. A substantial number of Republican congressmen have prevented Volodymyr Zelenskyy getting the additional billions he demanded in his recent trip. They object to the huge cost when America is $33 trillion in debt. They object to the lack of supervision of how the billions were spent, and where the arms went, saying that some weapons sent to Ukraine had fallen into the hands of criminal gangs and gun traffickers.

All our efforts should be directed to stopping this dreadful war, not prolonging the suffering any further, and not escalating it further and further risking a nuclear disaster.

William Loneskie, Lauder.

Contempt for our rural areas

THE Minister for Energy and the Environment, Gillian Martin, gave a statement: Vision for Scotland’s Future Energy System, on September 28 to an almost-empty Holyrood debating chamber. When asked by Conservative MSP Tess White MSP if new energy infrastructure projects must always be completed with the consent of residents, the minister replied that it was in the interests of developers to engage with communities early.

This is a classic "non-answer" answer. From the perspective of an affected community, when a developer plans to build a massive wind farm or pylon line in the local area, engagement of any type is only meaningful if local opinion changes anything. If developers and the Scottish Government disregard the views of local residents, and these projects go ahead regardless, the timing of the engagement is irrelevant.

Looking back, future generations will be aghast at the disdain shown to those living in rural areas and appalled by the damage inflicted on the landscape in Scotland, all in the name of Net Zero.

K Coltart, Dumfriesshire.

Read more: It's not men against women: it's horrible people versus the rest of us

Christianity and wokeness

DR Robert Anderson (Letters, September 30) asks: “Why does the Church of Scotland publicly reflect the spirit of the age, being politically correct, progressive and woke?”

I suggest the reason is that among the church’s objectives are “to respond to human need by loving service, to seek to transform unjust structures of society, to challenge violence of every kind and pursue peace and reconciliation and to strive to safeguard the integrity of creation and sustain and renew the life of the Earth”.

Unlike Dr Anderson I welcome the fact that “the spirit of the age”, at least to some extent, reflects the teaching of Jesus, thereby giving us some hope for the future.

I do not want your readers to be left with the impression that Dr Anderson's ultra-conservative, judgmental version of Christianity is all that is on offer. In fact I suggest his interpretation is what turns many away from listening to what Jesus has to say. After all, Jesus is the ultimate in “wokeness” used in its original sense, “being awake to social and racial injustice”, before it was captured by the Right and used as a term of abuse.

John Milne, Uddingston.

What if we beat malaria?

NEWS this week that a new, cheap malaria vaccine has been developed jointly by Oxford University and the Serum Institute of India will be warmly welcomed by those living in sub-Saharan countries, mainly, though not exclusively, Africa, where malaria is a major cause of death of hundreds of thousands of children who do not live to see their fifth birthday.

It will take time to tell for how long the vaccine will provide protection. The malaria-carrying parasite has demonstrated its ability to develop resistance to a wide range of drugs used to provide protection to individuals and it is reasonable to expect a similar measure of resistance to develop to the two vaccines now in the process of being made more generally available. It is to be hoped that the new vaccines will be able to be adapted to take account of this in due course.

There will be considerable implications following any significant fall in the mortality rate of children in countries already facing political and economic instability in addition to coping with the effects of climate change. Factors such as housing, education and ongoing health care, coupled with the provision of the very basics of life which we tend to take for granted such as food and access to clean water, will follow in the wake of the hoped-for success of a vaccination programme. Of course, the continued use of mosquito nets will prove necessary. As history has shown, as childhood mortality falls, through time, birth rates decline. In many countries, time is not on the side of those surviving in already harsh conditions.

Malcolm Allan, Bishopbriggs.

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The mark of a man

WHAT an excellent letter from Rhona Godfrey (October 3), and brave of her to state her case so clearly. I remember as a young boy my Dad told me: "There are only two kinds of people in this world, son, good people and bad people." He also chastened me one day for apologising because a friend of mine hadn’t turn up for the football, saying “never apologise for anyone else”.

These pieces of advice have helped me to make clear choices that are nothing to do with race, religion or gender.

Oh, and for the record Laurence Fox’s comments were disgusting, he is a very unpleasant guy. Sorry I’m fudging this, he’s a bad person. It’s as simple as that.

John Gilligan, Ayr.

Alice in Blunderland

WITH regard to Mandy Struthers' comments on clichés within political circles, dare I suggest that the various candidates have no need to start digging? It would appear that you don't have to look very far these days in order to find a ready-made rabbit hole to jump down.

Gordon Evans, Glasgow.