"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

That's exactly what we're doing but we need to be spending those billions of pounds on our armed forces now. I am not reacting to a single headline at all.

maybe spend what we can actually afford because the principle is good but we cannot be allowing the country to plunge further into debt. This is typical labour behaviour. Didn’t take long for them to start living beyond their means in order to make political statements. God knows what financial state we will be in in a few years if this is setting the tone of their approach!

So where’s your comment about yesterday’s statements by the defence minister on increasing spending and where it would be directed within our own forces? Did you miss that? Or ignore it?

@Arewealljustloosingtheplot its nothing to do with “typical Labour”, as the one consistent theme in politics has been the cross party support for Ukraine.

I fully support this spend. The UK is a world leader in defence and the opposition of tyrannical governments that seek to destabilise the safety of the entire world. Good on this government for doing this.

See, labour ain't all that after all.

We fight Putin in Ukraine now, or we fight him in Britain later.

If the West commits to freedom, we need to fully commit and that means giving Ukraine what it needs.

Russia is buying weapons from China, Northv Korea, Iran. It's paying men from Africa to fight for it. It's in talks with India and Saudi Arabia has warned the West from freezing Russian assets.

I agree, people saying we shouldn’t do this don’t understand military operations, or geopolitics, or how dangerous Putin will be if he sees this as a success. Not to mention the future of NATO… which we absolutely rely on for our national security. I don’t think people realise how much.

I didn't miss it or ignore it. We still can't afford to be giving billions of pounds away.

Yep, that's just silly. One thing the Tories did get right is they recognised the clear imperative to support Ukraine. There's a broad cross party consensus, like it or not.

We do send aid to Gaza.

OP, since you appear to be quite alarmed by big numbers, you should perhaps put this in context by realising that this £3 billion is 0.25% of the governments total spend in the year.

Agreed. Some people are seemingly incapable of seeing the wider implications. This support is necessary.

I am anti-war; a total pacifist. I hate the UK selling arms around the world. I am strongly opposed to our meddling in conflicts in the middle east etc.

But even I concede that Ukraine is different. Putin is an existential threat. If Trump gets in, NATO will be weakened. Europe needs to stick together and strengthen its defences.

And is less than the Conservative party wasted on PPE that got burned, or HS2.

Supporting Ukraine is first and foremost the right thing to do morally, but it is also in the UK’s security interests. Russia already invests huge amounts of money trying to influence the British public through an incredibly comprehensive disinformation effort, and its leaders have spent years buying assets both economic and human here. They think they’re at war with us already, trust me if you speak Russian and watch the state TV or read the more popular blogs there they fundamentally believe that to be the case.

If Ukraine falls, we’re all next.

@Missingpotatocroquettes Putin bombed a children’s hospital two days ago. We shouldn’t give £3bn to Ukraine, we should give £300bn. Putin needs to burn in hell.

I think you are mistaking labour for the Green Party op

Ok sure. It’s less about the support and more about then spend. But you do you.

It’s not as simple as supporting Ukraine.

It’s about proving to Russia that invading another country is unacceptable - because Russia won’t stop at Ukraine. Any reading of news of the South Caucasus or Poland or Romania or Moldova will tell even an idiot that Russia does not respect other countries autonomy and borders.

No. We can’t afford it. But equally we can’t have Russia continually sending missiles into NATO allies either or annexing parts of other countries. We lay down in 2014 with Crimea, with Abkhazia, with South Ossetia, with Transnistria. If Russia doesn’t take it by force, then it takes it through disinformation, through putting their own people into power, and through coercion. There is not a single one of Russias neighbours (except maybe Azerbaijan - who have their own wealth and security guarantees to protect them with a country Russia would never pick a fight with) that does not fear a Russian invasion.

We had to make our stand at some point and tbh we should have done it over a decade ago.

Edits - for some frankly shocking typos!

I am generally very anti-military, would happily cut spending for day-to-day stuff, loathe all the pomp and ceremony which I feel glorifies war, etc, but even I understand that we have to spend this money on Ukraine.

If Putin wins in Ukraine he won't stop. Why would he? He already believes he is at war with the West, he is spending enormous amounts of money on influencing elections on social media (all those Reform bots on Twitter have mysteriously disappeared now), if we don't show support of Ukraine he will invade further. This isn't some distant war, it absolutely will affect us if Putin wins.

As with all international aid, our govt provides backing to Ukraine because it is massively in the UK’s interests to do so.

They’re not just doing it out of the goodness of their heart. Do you not see this?

You really don’t get this, do you?

Also all of this. It’s because I hate and fear war that this is, unfortunately, a war I have to support to prevent worse.

Out of interest, why?