Sunak’s £2.5bn for Ukraine will be welcome, but it won’t stop Putin
Every little counts. Rishi Sunak’s announcement of £2.5bn of support in the coming year will allow Ukraine to buy more desperately needed long-range missiles, air defences equipment, artillery ammunition and maritime security, as it struggles to expel the Russian invaders.
To its credit, Britain is the second-biggest donor of military aid to Ukraine after the US. It’s given Kyiv a total of £4.6bn from 2022 to 2023.
But the really big hand-outs Ukraine needs to survive come from the US and EU. And the continuation of these is now in doubt as far-right populists in the West’s two power blocks try to impede the support for Kyiv.
Last month, Hungary blocked the EU’s proposed €50bn four-year package for Ukraine. US president Joe Biden failed to get his latest $60bn support package for Kyiv through the Republican-dominated Congress.
The two funding packages might yet be freed up.
But the reluctance to continue funding Ukraine’s fight for survival is likely to increase particularly in the US, where a growing chorus of Republican voices argues that continued support for Kyiv is detracting from the “real threat”, i.e. a Chinese invasion of Taiwan.
If Donald Trump is re-elected in November, Kyiv’s situation will look even bleaker. With Trump, a Putin-sympathiser, in the Oval Office again, Ukraine would suffer a savage cut in US support. This would probably be forced to make humiliating concessions to Moscow – while allowing Putin to restock and plan for another outright assault and threaten European security even more profoundly. But European security and long-term peace are of little concern to Trump.
To Western Europe, it means survival. Hence Sunak’s funding announcement in Kyiv on Friday, and Britain’s plan for a “100-year partnership” with Ukraine, which are symbolic as well as practical.
Putin has no regard for Western partnerships with Kyiv that are not backed by force.
Even if Europe, the US and the UK maintain support for Ukraine at the level they have done since February 2022, it will probably extend Ukraine’s defence, but not allow it to achieve a decisive victory and end the bloodshed.
The hesitancy in supplying Kyiv with tanks, then long-range missiles and F-16s, has already allowed Russia to hang on, then dig in and finally fight back, with a population of 143 million as cannon fodder.
Against a police state, geared up for a wartime economy – by a dictator who’s placed his reputation and survival on military success, the UK, and the EU and particularly the US – already distracted by events in the Middle East and Taiwan, will have to do even more. And right now, it’s unclear whether they have the will, despite Britain’s gesture.
