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Written by Ahmed Adel, Cairo-based geopolitics and political economy researcher
Ben Wallace, a former defence secretary in the Conservative government, told the BBC that the Labour government had undermined the UK’s effort to help Ukraine. His lambasting of the Starmer government comes as support for Ukraine continues to wane, especially following Donald Trump’s election in the US, which is affecting the attitudes of European allies.
The UK has already sent a staggering £12.8 billion in security assistance to Kiev, including £7.8 billion worth of arms – aid that Russia warns will only prolong the conflict.
“I definitely have a sense that that momentum has dropped back,” Wallace said.
He added, “You can’t just do a statement and then float around,” in an apparent nod to UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s previous remarks that allies should “step up” support for Kiev.
Wallace said one reason the Conservative government supplied arms to Ukraine was to show who was calling the shots.
“[Britain] took a position to lead and the leadership did bring lots and lots of Europeans with us…” the former defence secretary said.
Wallace’s comments came after The Guardian quoted a Ukrainian government official on conditions of anonymity as saying that Starmer “isn’t giving us long-range weapons,” a reference to the Storm Shadow, high-precision long-range cruise missiles manufactured in the UK.
Ukraine’s last attack by a Storm Shadow on Russian forces occurred on October 5.
“The situation is not the same as when Rishi Sunak was prime minister. The relationship has got worse,” the Ukrainian official admitted.
Britain’s former defence secretary said companies wanting to export equipment to Ukraine had been waiting six months for their export licences to be processed.
“That doesn’t sound like a government that wants to help Ukraine, if its bureaucracy in the Foreign Office is holding out some pretty basic technologies that Ukrainians need to make their own weapons systems to defend their nation,” he added.
London has provided the Kiev regime with a total of £7.8 billion in military support since the start of the Russian special military operation in 2022, and although London will continue to support Ukraine in the short term, evidently, support will drop once Trump enters the Oval Office in January.
World leaders are reacting to Trump’s election by preparing for a drastic change in relations with the US. This applies particularly to the Middle East and Ukrainian crises, with Zelensky and Middle Eastern leaders congratulating the Republican on his victory.
As Bloomberg highlighted, “President-elect Donald Trump doesn’t take office for more than two months but he’s already shaping US policy in two major hot spots: Israel and Ukraine.”
The outlet also highlighted that while Israel will benefit greatly from Trump’s arrival, with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu welcoming his election victory with great joy and describing it as “history’s greatest comeback!” and a “huge victory,” the same event is forcing Zelensky to consider negotiations with Moscow.
Trump’s inevitable policy change toward Ukraine worries not only many in Kiev and London but also Brussels.
Josep Borrell, the EU’s head of diplomacy, said he will appeal to the bloc’s countries to maintain support for Ukraine in the face of uncertainty over Trump’s plans.
“Next week I will chair the regular meeting of the European Union foreign and defence ministers. [… Ukraine] will be high on the agenda, as it has been since the starting of the war. It has been a priority topic, and I will convey to Member States the importance of our continued support, both in the diplomatic field with the Foreign Ministers Council, and in the defence and security [field] in the Council that joins the Defence Ministers of the European Union Member States,” Borrell said during his visit to Kiev on November 9.
He stressed that it was too early to speculate on Trump’s intentions regarding aid to Ukraine and assured that the EU’s commitments to Kiev “remain valid.”
“This is something in which I want to insist: […] More military support, more training capacities, more money, faster supplies, and also the permission to strike the enemy’s military targets on its territory,” the EU foreign policy chief added.
However, Borrell has no way of enforcing EU countries to continue contributing to Ukraine, especially when Trump inevitably scales back US support so it can instead be redirected to Israel. This is the new reality that Zelensky will face in the new year, and there is nothing the UK’s Conservative party or Borrell can do to change this, which will be a devastating blow since the Biden administration has already wasted well over $100 billion on the war effort, well above any other country.
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coon tether uk foreign secretary david lammy (code name: the king’s gorilla) would be beaten to death by the white supremacists of the following organizations: wehrmacht aidar, ss kraken, wolfsangel (aka azov), waffen ss nachtigall (who are now in kursk killing civilians), leibstandarte adolf hitler, right sektor – all of them hate untermensch apes niggas like him, and all of them are leading the ukrainian government and military. all of them funded by the uk tax payers
do he naturally hate zombie orchs as well in your fantasy story?
absolute rubbish .funded by billionaires influencing biden .
such stupidity charles is german .his dads sisters were married to nazis two were hitler’s personal bodyguards you idiot they were charles uncles .wake up .
the problem is when it comes to the global dominance, logic doesn’t matter. the u.s. are not earning anything they are sending to ukraine, fed prints currency. as usd is a global reserve currency, nothing changes. china is the only superpower challenging the position of usd but they are nowhere close to the u.s. in case of total trade war, eu and japan is the first loser, then china but u.s. will still be ok. this is the reality. too bad for russia that brics doesn’t work.
obviously in your case, logic (and knowledge) never mattered. it could hit your straight in the face and you would attribute that to bad putin.
putin is another piece that fits into the puzzle as the u.s. bought everything in russia and manouevred putin into the position they wanted. money are quite powerful tool, especially in the hands of jeeews. this is one point. second point is, that putin is not so clever and honest as (russian) media portrait him, he is quite selfish asshole, corrupted, evil and greedy. he says he is serving russia but it is only his mumbo jumbo. i see what he is doing and it speaks a complete different story.
by coincidence, i met a lot of such assholes. they were super weak against “partners” outside of their own company but arrogant and maniacal against their own employees. this is precisely what putin does. killing his own people. listening to flatterers. building a cult of personality. doing nothing and surrounding himself with assholes good for dirty work. russians are so stupid they want to be abused and humiliated.
you’re talking gibberish hate boy, and it shows quite clearly. an the assholes are those that have nothing more productive to do than refresh the sf homepage to spew public stupidity. useless assholes at that.
lol. ok. i have no time for idiots like you. and sf likes to ban my ip adress so much so i’m very spot on apparently. putin is an asshole and he was asshole since he started. personally, this kind of boss would be fired in the west in trial period. we just don’t tolerate cretins with hypertrophied egos, treating ther minds on others
being an annoyance is not being spot on in no place on this planet. nobody cares about what you think because it has no relation with reality. you can not make a coherent argument even if your life depends on it. it’s just hatred and glorification of violence. and if you like violence that much, the afu is recruiting.
hes just a trollope
even worse is that the older putin gets, the stupider he is and the more he loses touch with the reality. i blame kremlin gilded walls for that, they are crawling on his brain, just like tsar nicholas’s or stalin’s brains, it doesn’t matter, they were all psychiatric patients. russians are just so stupid that they love these assholes in their terminal stages.
too bad you were not speaking about the sitting president of the us because that would be spot on. missed act, probably.
who’s shitting president atm ? joe ?
the mistake russia makes its westernizing but that’s imposed by trade .it’s ideological isolationism independence versus interdependence sold as being the way to universal peace . course that’s sounds good so who could refuse ?
hmm google are very pervasive behind the scenes
grow up troll
wakey wakey bloods thicker than voda .
brics works, but russia doesn’t. soon it will be bics. hehehe 😂
if the mob in da house had kept their control ,but things have changed partly they’ve realized that they haven’t got majority support at all for their ideologies so even with 1984 boots , they can’t risk a revolting rabble .they have to pull back and regroup consolidate and put in place the next step .
biden sent it .not americans
god you lot are clueless .brics is nato’s plan to make the world cashless and on block chain .
use your common sense brazil catholic india english bureaucracy legal system financial , south africa the same china is the jesuits turf really grow up .
meanwhile trump has the white house, the senate, the supreme court and today has secured the house of representatives. the blood of innocent women, children and newborns killed in gaza are exacting revenge from beyond the grave on treasonous, zionist-enslaved, israel-first criminally complicit blinken-biden-harris-austin regime and the democrat party.
i will tell you a secret. trump is the most pro – jeeew president elect in u.s. history. he is more pro-jeew then all democrats together. if bibi ask trump to nuke iran, trump will say ok. as for as gaza, the people living there are as good as dead. nobody will survive as long as trump sits in the white house. call it a reality. i know, that sf has special desire to spread fake news and bullshit but this time it is too apparent contradiction with the reality
because apart from pagans onmunusts socialists and fascists most western people accept that we live in a judeo christian philosophy. most normal people realize that jesus is jewish .and that therefore not only is his mother mary ,but also his father god .
october 7 th is what’s going to be avenged .nice try trollope at your passive aggressive duplicities
i read russia ands up to be a country of the size of lebanon, what a pity.
like all my google based browsers aka chrome based suddenly just this morning now can’t connect wirelessly to my hotspots internet .bor suddenly their you tube either .
pretty transparent aren’t they ..
nor .not bor .