Successive Prime Ministers have enjoyed public support to condemn the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the vicious attacks on civilians in Ukrainian cities. They have also been right to keep UK forces out of the war. Ukraine is not a member of NATO. The UK does not want to declare war on Russia. NATO relies heavily on its US contribution. The current US President wants a negotiated peace in Ukraine and does not want a war against Russia.
So far so good. The problem with these popular positions is they leave Ukraine locked in a bitter and never ending conflict with Russia with insufficient support from allies to drive Russia out of the parts of Ukraine they do occupy. So what we have seen is a creeping rise in types of military support with Western allies gradually increasing the ferocity and capability of weapons they will supply. There has also been some movement from only supplying weapons claimed to be defensive and confined to use in Ukraine, though there is still some caution about supplying weapons that could be used by Ukraine in and against targets in Russia.
This is still not enough to allow Ukraine to overwhelm Russian positions in East Ukraine. The Ukrainian ability to develop and make lots of relatively cheap drones has negated the use of Russian tanks and has now largely frozen frontlines, creating a killing zone between the front trench lines of the two sides. Ukraine however relies on substantial financial support from the West and their weapons exports to supplement home production.
The US under President Biden was most cautious over what types of weapon to allow Ukraine. Under President Trump the money and weapons sent to Ukraine has been reduced after early years generosity. The President sees the Ukraine war as being an EU responsibility. After all, he reasons, the EU wants Ukraine to become a member.The Europeans he thinks should take. more responsibility for their own defence after years of heavy reliance on US forces. The original Russian invasion of Crimea resulted from the EU helping get an elected pro Russia President out of office, de stabilising the situation though that was no excuse for the Russian actions that followed.
The Germans have responded to the need to increase help but France and the other leading EU states have not. The EU talks of accelerating EU membership, not ruling it out while the war continues. NATO is clearer. A state cannot join to enjoy the Security support from others whilst fighting a war, for obvious reasons.
What should the EU do to help its candidate member? What role should the EU play in trying to stabilise its borders? What are the EU’s objectives over expansion to the east?
August 25, 2026
Perhaps Mr Burnham has rather more important things to do at home than playing songs by The Smiths on a guitar with Ukrainian soldiers in Kyiv. The man is all pathetic PR and worthless platitudes.
Things like controlling the borders, cutting the vast government waste, funding defence properly, ditching net zero, drilling, fracking, reversing the doom loop tax to death economic policies, releasing honest figures on the Covid Vaccine harms, restoring free speech… In short reversing virtually all he and Starmer have done so far.