The Prime Minister says he will send British soldiers to Ukraine, on a mission that may require them to fight Russian troops, risking confrontation with a nuclear power unlike anything we experienced in the Cold War. Yet Keir Starmer has been asked few questions about his policy.
The PM says planning for the “coalition of the willing” is entering the “operational phase”, when military commanders work out the logistics of deployment. But Ukraine remains a war zone. The Russian constitution now declares Crimea, Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia parts of Russia, but Ukraine still controls territory in the last four. If the war continues, or Putin accepts a truce and then resumes fighting, what is the plan?
And what is the objective of the coalition of the willing? Ukraine has more than a million men under arms, and Starmer has proposed deploying more than 10,000 troops from different countries. Is the suggestion that this small force would stop Putin if he attacks again? Or is it to show that an attack with Western troops in Ukraine would risk a wider war – fought by the countries of the coalition, Europe or Nato? Is the plan to make this outcome clear, or leave it ambiguous?
The Prime Minister says he will send British soldiers to Ukraine, on a mission that may require them to fight Russian troops, risking confrontation with a nuclear power unlike anything we experienced in the Cold War. Yet Keir Starmer has been asked few questions about his policy.
The PM says planning for the “coalition of the willing” is entering the “operational phase”, when military commanders work out the logistics of deployment. But Ukraine remains a war zone. The Russian constitution now declares Crimea, Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia parts of Russia, but Ukraine still controls territory in the last four. If the war continues, or Putin accepts a truce and then resumes fighting, what is the plan?
And what is the objective of the coalition of the willing? Ukraine has more than a million men under arms, and Starmer has proposed deploying more than 10,000 troops from different countries. Is the suggestion that this small force would stop Putin if he attacks again? Or is it to show that an attack with Western troops in Ukraine would risk a wider war – fought by the countries of the coalition, Europe or Nato? Is the plan to make this outcome clear, or leave it ambiguous?