"Prime Minister Keir Starmer recommits to £3 billion a year of military support for Ukraine until 2030/31 and for as long as needed"

[changefromhr]

That's a huge amount of money for a war that's not going to end anytime soon.
3 BILLION a year!
3 x 1 thousand millions!
Where is this money going to come from? This is in addition to almost £12.5bn in military, humanitarian and economic support already given for Ukraine since Russia’s illegal and miscalculated full scale invasion in February 2022.
https://www.gov.uk/government/news/uk-to-stand-with-ukraine-for-as-long-as-it-takes-pm-to-tell-nato

We enacted significant constitutional change on a lesser mandate to that. Much to Putin's joy.

And the Reform vote was bolstered by russian interference, as was the Brexit vote. Farage thinks Putin is a great guy who was forced to attack Ukraine because 'NATO'. (No mention of the fact that Putin has diverted troops from the borders of Finland to Ukraine since they joined the defence alliance so great a threat does he feel NATO to be.)
Another referendum on anything would allow yet more interference from the bot farms. I don't think many people have switched on to the huge danger russia poses to our democratic processes in Europe.

Nice try..but doesnt grab me at all.. .53 vs 47 are not that different. Still 5 days and 20 hours to go?

That's not a bad ratio considering all the russian bots out there targeting social media will have voted YANBU. I'm not saying everyone agrees with the policy of funding Ukraine but one things for sure everyone in the employ of russia will be against it.

@duckfordinner I'm disenfranchised 🤣

I use the app and app users can't vote

It's true that there is a massive attempt by Russia to artificially influence social media in the UK - Mumsnet was even spoken of as one of the targets :o (I still find that surreal)

“This is typical labour behaviour“

And bingo, there we go! Sunak would have committed to the same, had he remained in post. Johnson would have argued for more.

Lets put that in the context of the Brexit referendum and see how that argument sits.

@WinterMorn I actually agree with you on this. That was painful for Remainers. In any case, we should see what results will be when the poll is closed on here in 5 days time.

We should raise it with @Mumsnet. Why can't we vote in app?

Solidarity and allyship with Ukraine is essential to safeguard both our own and western European security. There is no reason to not sell or donate weapons to an ally. There is no reason to place restrictions on the use of those weapons beyond what is already forbidden by the Geneva convention. There is no reason to force Ukraine to defend itself with one hand tied behind its back.

Russia launches attacks on Ukraine from airbases hundreds of kilometres inside Russian territory and fires the weapons without the aircraft crossing the border. Ukraine should legitimately be able to whack those sites and prevent those Russian attacks before the weapons are fired, which is best done when the aircraft are still on the ground.

I would go further, personally if I were NATO. I would openly authorise and deliver detailed intelligence and targetting data to Ukraine, and openly authorise and deliver campaign plans to liberate the occupied territory. I would also provide a no-fly-zone over the unoccupied part of Ukraine with NATO aircraft, allowing Ukraine to focus its own aircraft (and the F16s) on occupied territory.

Sometimes you just have to roll your sleeves up.

@brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr ,

And you would be risking nuclear escalation.

I don’t understand why the UK is the only country allowing free use of our missiles to attack Russia when we have no iron dome.

There is really no need for us to go beyond the U.S and the rest of NATO.

This jingoistic approach is crazy.

I think the U.S have played it perfectly, not allowing Russia to lose or win or give Putin an excuse to use tactical nukes.

We can never face down a nuclear adversary when they are not even directly threatening us. We don’t even do it with North Korea.

The US allows Ukraine to use US weapons in Russia too, with certain restrictions.

I think it’s brilliant for Britain to stand up to Russia, and believe it will encourage others to take a similar stance. If we gave Ukraine to Putin, would we be more or less secure than we are now ?

If Putin then invaded Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia and Moldova would we also hold back with the use of our weapons ?

If the answer is “no”, then it should be “no” now.

@Newbutoldfather if Putin wants to use nukes, he will use nukes. The escalation argument is rapidly becoming redundant.

The victim blaming mentality is nuts.

We can't do something because it might make Putin escalate to nukes.

How far does that travel before he does it anyway? Fuck that.

If Putin escalates to nukes, it's because of Putins actions, nobody else's. Draw the line in the sand.

@Newbutoldfather It's not jingoistic - it's common sense to support the people who are facing down a gigantic threat.

The Kremlin uses the threat of nuclear escalation in order to scare you. There have been literally hundreds of them coming from Russia - I have a record somewhere if you want to see. It's intended to do exactly what it's done for you - scare people so that they crumble and allow Russia to invade countries, as with Chechnya, Ukraine, Transnistra, Crimea and Georgia.

If Russia uses nuclear weopons, tactical or larger, they're going to have to answer to China and in the partnership between China and Russia, China's the senior one. Xi Jingping has already told Putin to rein in his own threats, which is why it's the officials under him who spin them out like paint from a whirling pan and almost never him himself.

And in the end ... If you think that Germany, Lithuania, Latvia, Poland, Estonia and other countries will not fight back if Russia tries to invade as the officials have threatened, nukes or no nukes, I'm afraid that's not the case.

@brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr ,

‘The US allows Ukraine to use US weapons in Russia too, with certain restrictions.’

The restrictions are important and we should impose the same restrictions.

‘I think it’s brilliant for Britain to stand up to Russia, and believe it will encourage others to take a similar stance. If we gave Ukraine to Putin, would we be more or less secure than we are now ? ‘

I don’t, and it won’t. Who do you think is looking at the UK for leadership. Have you seen the state of our armed forces recently? Maybe we should rearm ourselves ahead of arming a foreign power.

If we really feel we are threatened, our first priority should be a missile defence system at least as good as Israel’s.

No one is talking about ‘giving’ Ukraine. As I said, a long stalemate followed by a diplomatic solution is optimal.

‘If Putin then invaded Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia and Moldova would we also hold back with the use of our weapons ? ‘

This is superpower politics and best left to actual superpowers to decide. Our involvement should be limited to our role within NATO. We don’t need to go beyond this either militarily or politically.

Have you seen the state of Russia’s armed forces ?

Any diplomatic solution which gifts ANY occupied Ukranian territory to Russia is unacceptable and sends a message to Moscow that military invasions work. Crimea is a stepping stone to Moldova. They cannot have ANY of it.

So is there a diplomatic solution which involves Russia returning ALL Ukrainian territory to Ukraine ?

@DucklingSwimmingInstructress ,

‘The Kremlin uses the threat of nuclear escalation in order to scare you. There have been literally hundreds of them coming from Russia - I have a record somewhere if you want to see. It's intended to do exactly what it's done for you - scare people so that they crumble and allow Russia to invade countries, as with Chechnya, Ukraine, Transnistra, Crimea and Georgia. ‘

Maybe, but you don’t know any more than I do. As we saw, Russia couldn’t even invade Ukraine and the scary column of tanks turned out to be a massive logistical overreach.

I think people are ridiculously scared of this domino effect as they are still mentally fighting the Nazi war machine of WW2.

Russia has already been given a huge bloody nose in Ukraine and are suing for peace in return for 20% of the country. They have no appetite, men or arms for further adventuring

Nukes are real and an existential danger to humanity far in excess of climate change . Brinkmanship is brilliant….until you go over the brink.

What percentage chance of global Armageddon is worth it to you for us to declare victory in Ukraine? 10%, 1%, 0.1%. Because you cannot pretend it is zero.

@Newbutoldfather your post doesn’t factor in the cost to Putin of using a nuke.

That’s fair. Attacking Labour on this issue is dumb and wrong.

But when I said on a thread a while ago that Johnson could be praised for his support for Ukraine I got loads of Labour supporters telling me he didn’t really mean it, it wasn’t his decision, he was only doing it to give money to arms manufacturers etc etc.

It would be nice to see some sensible give and take on here about domestic politics.

its absurd. All the money Ukraine has been given has only killed more Ukrainian men. The Russians are massively better prepared and showing that on a daily basis. The EU and UK should be saving their money and sitting down to discuss a non-military buffer zone in Ukraine and no more war.

Even if you are pro funding Ukraine, it must be obvious to all that £3bn is a drop in a very large ocean and isn't going to lead to any sort of victory. Ukraine is just living as a rump state while more and more of their men get killed.

I suspect tar more russian men have been killed

What does a non military buffer zone look like?

Without support Ukraine would have fallen months ago, what then?

This, but not only this.

Our armed forces are in a terrible state from years of neglect. It's not for nothing that Putin thinks he can do anything he wants and get away with it.

No one is talking about ‘giving’ Ukraine. As I said, a long stalemate followed by a diplomatic solution is optimal.

Optimal for whom? Certainly not for Ukraine who are the innocent party in this and have been invaded, bombed, children kidnapped, women raped, people tortured, their land occupied, their dams destroyed and are losing their youth to this blood thirsty tyrant.
If we're taking 'optimal' outcomes, optimal for Ukraine is for russian forces to pack up and go back where they came from and for russia to pay reparations for the damage that has been caused - although no amount of money will ever compensate Ukraine for what Putin has put them through.