There are few things in contemporary geopolitics more heartening — or more humbling — than watching Ukraine fight for its life.

Just days ago, without sending a single platoon across the border or dispatching a single jet into enemy airspace, Ukraine struck a stunning blow deep inside Russian territory. Deploying a swarm of drones in an operation code-named “Spiderweb,” Kyiv destroyed or damaged a third of Russia’s long-range strategic bombers — the aircraft responsible for launching missile attacks against Ukrainian cities (and a mainstay of the Russian nuclear triad). The drones devastated airfields as far away as Siberia, thousands of miles from Ukraine’s border with Russia. According to Volodymyr Zelensky, the Ukrainian president, all the personnel involved in planning the mission had left Russia before the attacks took place.

This was not just another maneuver in a long and grueling war. It was a masterstroke of ingenuity, courage, and asymmetrical warfare — and it should erase any remaining doubt about three critical truths.

First, Ukraine’s tenacity is not merely impressive. It is inspirational. From the earliest days of the full-scale Russian invasion, when Kyiv refused to fall and civilians lined up to make Molotov cocktails, to now, when Ukraine is conducting precision strikes far behind enemy lines, this nation has refused to surrender. Outgunned, outmanned, and under constant bombardment, Ukraine persists — with skill, strategy, and steel in its spine.

“Victory,” Winston Churchill observed in 1940, “will never be found by taking the line of least resistance.” Ukraine has taken the hardest road imaginable, and it keeps pressing on.

Second, no army on earth today is more experienced in fighting a modern war against a nuclear-armed dictatorship than Ukraine’s. After years of trial by fire, its military is arguably the most battle-hardened and tactically innovative in the Western sphere. The Ukrainian armed forces have combined Cold War-era equipment with bleeding-edge technologies, improvised workarounds, and battlefield agility to repeatedly surprise the Russian military — and, for that matter, Western officials.

When Russian invaders thought they could take Kyiv in three days, Ukraine forced a retreat. When Russian Black Sea dominance appeared insurmountable, Ukraine sank the flagship Moskva. And now, when striking strategic bombers parked deep inside Russia seems like a plot for a science-fiction thriller, Ukraine has again demonstrated that it doesn’t take orders from conventional wisdom. When it comes to the essential purpose for which NATO was created — deterring, confronting, and defeating Russia in battle — Ukraine today has more experience, and has achieved more success, than any other nation.

Third, it is long past time for Ukraine to be admitted to NATO.

Yes, even while the war is ongoing.

Especially while the war is ongoing.

In the more than three decades since the Cold War ended, no country has shown more loyalty to the West, or more bravery in its defense, than Ukraine. NATO membership wasn’t designed to be a reward for good behavior; it is a security pact for mutual protection. Who better to bolster that pact than the Ukrainians, who have been fighting and dying on the front lines of freedom for more than three years, yet have not asked any other nation to risk the life of a single soldier in Ukraine’s defense? On the contrary: So advanced is Ukraine’s frontline expertise in resisting Russia that its army is now being enlisted by NATO members to instruct their troops. It was announced in April, for example, that teams of Danish soldiers are to be sent to Ukraine for training in drone combat techniques.

President Trump has treated Ukraine with shocking callousness and its valiant president with contempt, even as he has fawned almost endlessly over the Russian dictator, Vladimir Putin. So it is hardly surprising that Zelensky didn’t notify Trump in advance of the attack and obtain his permission, a fact that some MAGA loyalists seemed to find intolerable. As the leader of a democracy defending itself against an aggressor — and himself against assassination — Zelensky is not obliged to ask anyone but Ukraine’s voters for permission to resist.

Trump has falsely accused Kyiv of starting the war and even suspended military assistance to Ukraine in a fit of pique after the disastrous Oval Office summit in February. It was during that meeting that the US president — knowing nothing about the secret drone operation Ukraine was planning — angrily berated Zelensky, telling him: “You don’t have the cards! You’re buried there! Your people are dying!”

In the weeks since then, as National Review’s Jim Geraghty observed Monday, Ukraine proceeded to inflict an estimated 41,000 casualties on the Russian military and to disable or destroy another 272 of Russia’s tanks, 1,644 of its artillery systems, and 607 of its combat armored vehicles. It has drastically undercut the the threat posed by the Russian navy. And now it has wrecked a major swath of Russia’s long-range bomber fleet. Ukraine doesn’t have the cards? Oh, yes it does.

Analysts have been insisting for years that Ukraine cannot win this war. Maybe they’re right. Maybe the Russian war machine will grind on, and in the end Kyiv will be forced to yield up much of its territory and to abandon its hope of full integration with the West. Maybe.

But Ukraine has already achieved far greater success in the face of overwhelming odds than anyone believed possible. Again and again it has not just survived to fight another day but has discovered new ways to shift the military balance against a deceitful, murderous enemy.

Each time Ukraine beats the odds, it is the entire free world that stands taller. After Operation Spiderweb, it should be clearer than ever that there is no legitimate justification to withhold from Ukraine all the tools and diplomatic support we can provide. Because there is no future in which America and the West are better off if Ukraine loses.