Hereford Times readers will know that I try to stick to local issues in this column. But my subject this week is so important that it is both national and local.

Almost six months in, the war in Ukraine shows no sign of diminishing in its intensity, or in the strategic problems it sets for the whole of Europe.

The initial failures of the Russian offensive in the face of well-organised and heroic Ukrainian resistance has given way to a grim attritional struggle in the eastern part of the country.

But the cost of this aggression lies not only in the horrendous death, destruction and fear which Russia is inflicting on Ukraine, and the huge wave of refugees who are now seeking safety in Western Europe. It also falls on the people of this country, in soaring fuel and energy costs and rising inflation.

The UK can be very proud of the part it has played in supporting Ukrainians in the face of unprovoked Russian aggression. The same is true for our own county in many different ways, as history will show. 

I and my team have worked on dozens of cases of Ukrainian refugees or family members coming to Herefordshire, where they have received a warm welcome.

But there is, I am sorry to say, likely to be more trouble ahead. Russia would like nothing more than for the Ukraine conflict to be banished from the front pages of our newspapers, and for western political resolve to erode in the face of inflation and the impact of winter.

Yet we should be in no doubt. This is not only a struggle to preserve a free and independent nation from the aggression of a large and powerful neighbour.

It is a struggle to maintain the status of liberal democracy itself as an ideal, and to defend it against autocracy.

History is never a simple story, but our own country has made a founding contribution over the centuries to the ideas of democracy, tolerance, free speech, political parties, representative government and the rule of law. 

In September we will have a new Prime Minister and a new government.  It now falls to them, indeed to us all, not merely to help the people of this country to get through this difficult inflationary period, but to stand tall in defence of these ideas and in support of our Ukrainian allies.

First published in the Hereford Times and Ross Gazette.