The surge in energy bills stoked by the war in Ukraine is a price worth paying, a Ukrainian-born Senedd member who has just returned from the country said. Mick Antoniw drove a 4x4 containing ration packs, winter clothing, sleeping bags, and medical and cooking equipment to Lviv in the west of the country. It also had Starlink satellite communications equipment - effectively a back-up internet service - made by Elon Musk's firm SpaceX.
Vladimir Putin's invasion in February sent commodity prices soaring - especially gas - and pushed already rising inflation to levels not seen in the UK for decades. Governments are spending billions of pounds cushioning householders from the worst effects of the energy shock while scrambling to secure alternative supplies of hydrocarbons.
Mr Antoniw, who has relatives fighting in Ukraine and also relatives who live in Russia, said victory for the invaders would create further global instability and lead to countries spending more and more on defence. "The economic cost cannot be under-estimated if Putin is able to succeed," said the Labour MS for Pontypridd. He added that a wider message would be conveyed, that if you took somewhere by force you're entitled to do it.
Mr Antoniw was in Ukraine on the eve of the February 24 invasion and has delivered supplies and equipment since. He was accompanied on his latest trip by Blaenau Gwent MS Alun Davies and trade union official and former miner Carwyn Donovan.
While the fighting is taking place in the east and south of Ukraine, missile attacks have targeted wide areas of the country and its power grid. "No-one is isolated," said Mr Antoniw. There was though a sense of normality in the west of the country, he said - shops, restaurants and theatres were open, albeit sometimes powered by generators, and Deliveroo drivers were ferrying food to people's houses.
But festivities were low-key, checkpoints and an 11pm curfew were in place, protective screens positioned around statues, and anti-tank traps visible. Mr Antoniw and his travelling companions were met in Lviv by a miner and military representative from Ukraine. The two contacts drove the 4x4 east to the city of Pavlohrad, and from there north to Ukraine's second-largest city, Kharkiv.
Asked to describe the general mood among Ukrainians, Mr Antoniw replied: "There is incredible stoicism, incredible resilience. People are angry as well. Many of them have family members in Russia. Whatever bonds there were, they are broken."
Mr Antoniw said his cousin's wife in Ukraine would not celebrate Christmas on January 7, when Orthodox Christians normally did, because that's when Russia's Orthodox Christians would. "She said she will celebrate on December 25," said Mr Antoniw.
He said he had other relatives fighting in the east. "They say they have nowhere to go and that they are not going to be chased away - and they are incredible grateful to Great Britain, and America in particular," said Mr Antoniw. "There is no doubt the weaponry has made a difference in being able to halt the advance and push out the Russians."
Mr Antoniw, who lives in Tonyrefail and provides legal advice to the Welsh Government in his role as Counsel General, said he believed war crimes tribunals should be set up following evidence of atrocities by occupying Russian soldiers and that hundreds of billions of pounds of seized Russian assets should be allocated to rebuild Ukraine in the future.
He characterised the invasion as "a new form of fascism" representing an extreme right-wing strain of Russian nationalism. How the conflict might end is the subject of much war-gaming and speculation. "The only way I can see it ending is by pushing the Russian troops back to the extent that something happens in Russia and Putin is forced to go," said Mr Antoniw. "Most people I speak to basically there is no basis for peace with Putin."
Ukraine declared itself an independent country in 1991 having been part of the USSR for nearly 70 years. It is larger than France and has a population of more than 43 milion, although there has been a mass exodus - mainly westward - this year. For centuries Ukraine has been fought in and fought over - sandwiched between or not far from great power rivals Poland, Russia, Austria-Hungary and Germany. "There's barely a generation that has not been under some form of attack," said Mr Antoniw.
Russia's president has previously described the collapse of the Soviet empire as "the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century”, which had left millions of his countrymen outside Russian territory. He has sought to explain the invasion by suggesting variously that Russian-speaking people in Ukraine were under attack, that Ukraine needed to be "de-Nazified", and that Russia's own security was under threat from an encroaching Nato (North Atlantic Treaty Organisation).
This week, despite months of shelling and missile attacks, Mr Putin said he continued to see Ukraine as a "brotherly nation", and that the West had "brainwashed" former Soviet republics, starting with Ukraine. Russia, though, was one of the signatories of an agreement in 1994 - the Budapest Memorandum - in which Ukraine gave up a large arsenal of nuclear weapons which were a legacy from the Soviet empire in return for security and sovereignty guarantees.
Mr Antoniw said most Ukrainians he knew or had met on the frontline were Russian speakers, and that many of them didn't want to speak Russian any more. He branded Mr Putin's reasoning "nonsense", adding that the Russian president had unwittingly strengthened Nato and given it a new sense of purpose.
Asked what Ukrainians made of their actor-turned-president, Volodymyr Zelensky, Mr Antoniw said: "I think he has come of age. Ukrainians have a certain amount of cynicism with its presidents and issues of corruption, and people were uncertain about what he (Mr Zelensky) represented. The most important thing he did was that he stayed. He didn't flee. He stayed at risk to himself and his family."
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