"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

Ukraine shouldn’t be allowed to fall. Russia won’t stop there . It’ll be a NATO country next. That said I think it’s a lot of money. I do think it’s easier to spend money you haven’t earned. I might have wants but when I consider how many minutes it took me to earn £3 for a decent coffee, Then I decide to wait till I’m home and have nice coffee for 50p. When work is buying I’m much more generous.

I hope when they commit to enormous sums they consider where the money comes from and how hard people have had to work.

Wonder if OP is going to come back?

I’m unsure as to why my opinion matters so much to you, why do you desperately need to be right?! I’m sorry I’ll have to leave our little interaction now to get some work done. Have a lovely day.

£3bn is not a lot of money in terms of government spend. It's like me giving my food bank £20 a month.

@Arewealljustloosingtheplot oh dear.

Blimey, you don't seem to have got your head around how AIBU works...

As a bit of context, the UK recieved $31.4bn from the US in Lend-Lease aid during WW2 ($670bn in today's money), and a further $2.7bn ($58bn today) in post-war aid via the Marshall Plan.

Although the US was late to actively joining the war, they recognised the importance of the Allies' fight against Nazi expansion and provided the funds and equipment for us to do so.

Serious parallels with today's situation in Ukraine. We need to stand behind Ukraine, and while $3bn sounds a lot to us, on a global and national scale it is pretty reasonable.

I don’t. You could tell me?

Pa it was an innocent question. No sarcasm intended.

US only really joined after Pearl Harbour

I'd rather we don't need a Pearl Harbour moment to make people realise how serious the situation could get for us here
Putin will continue with others if he takes Ukraine and we will be drawn in like it or not. Appeasement doesn't work.

I'm glad that Labour has continued the commitment to supper Ukraine.

As others have said, Ukraine wouldn't be the end of Russian ambitions There really are, unfortunately, parallels with the appeasement strategy of the 1930s.

The Baltic states have been explicit about the risk: that Russia's strategy is to take a little, re-group and then take more

The West didn't react properly when Russia invaded Crimea. The consequence was that Russia was emboldened to continue into the rest of Ukraine. Putin has stated explicitly that he doesn't consider Ukraine to be a sovereign state.

Ukraine is the only country in the world to have voluntarily given up its nuclear weapons, which was codified in the Budapest Memorandum of 1994. This guaranteed that its sovereignty would be protected. Russia, USA and the UK committed then to support Ukraine in the event of any aggression against Ukraine.

Unfortunately, Russia proved that its commitments to international treaties are worthless. So why should anyone believe that it would respect a "peace treaty" that involves Ukraine giving up its sovereign territories?

So no, I do think it's right that we are continuing to commit resources to Ukraine, for all our safety. If anything, we should be committing more and releasing Ukraine from constraints as to how or where they can use the assets that we send them.

Putin is intent on wiping out Ukraine as a nation. Ukrainian children have been taken from their communities and forcibly adopted in Russis to be made into good Russian citizens. That is not just reclaiming non existent borders.

Any negotiating should be on Ukraine's terms, and should start with Russia getting back to the pre 2014 borders, and then giving ground to a buffer zone. It should certainly mean all those children being reunited with their families, and Russia paying to rebuild what it has destroyed.

We should be fully supporting Ukraine in this.

Other countries like Estonia and Latvia were also in the USSR, all the way up to East Germany. Many of these countries are NATO members.

Can you clarify what exactly do you mean by “wants”?
It is a bit unclear from your post.

Russia's already attacking the UK, mostly from within and to a certain degree physically.

We might not want to be at war, but it doesn't depend on us - it depends on the country that is hostile to us, and we can't control that.

We need to face it and to pay for ways to stop it.

Proof?

Russia's carrying out some sabotage missions within the UK and Europe already and actively recruiting to get more people to carry them out
https://www.theguardian.com/world/article/2024/may/30/europe-on-high-alert-after-suspected-moscow-linked-arson-and-sabotage

There was also a potentially suspicious incident at a S Wales arms factory, although the investigation is still ongoing so Russian involvement isn't confirmed. But there have been other incidents in Europe where it has been confirmed including Germany recently (https://www.wsj.com/world/europe/russian-saboteurs-behind-arson-attackat-german-factory-c13b4ece ) and Czechia, that one was quite a few years ago now.
https://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/wales-news/explosion-major-bae-systems-arms-29012349

Russia's shadow war
https://edition.cnn.com/2024/07/10/europe/russia-shadow-war-nato-intl-latam/index.html

Russia's already attacking the UK from within, it's called Hybrid warfare
https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/nato-says-russian-hybrid-attack-intensify-members-territories-2024-05-02/

Bojo wouldn't allow the investigation into Russian funding of Brexit to be released which says a lot in itself, but Farage is clearly a stooge for the Kremlin. Certainly Russia's been interfering in British politics for a long time
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligence_and_Security_Committee_Russia_report

and Russia's interfered in Scottish politics https://thehill.com/policy/national-security/508266-uk-intelligence-report-says-russia-meddled-in-scottish-independence/ ... plenty more evidence but this is more than enough!

Well that didn't take long

There's a whole section on gaza

I didn't understand it either

It sounded like a trite "you do you" response that means there is no answer

What eastern pro Russian regions?

We could just leave the Russians to march through Europe, I suppose.

Who?

Some of us do have jobs you know!
Posted this before work. Reading replies in my break.
Defence against Russia is important BUT that is an insane amount of money when we have problems of our own. Will it be spent wisely? Are we dick waving with the US to compete?
And the war won't end with Zelensky calling the shots.

https://www.stopwar.org.uk/article/how-to-sell-a-war-4-make-it-about-freedom/

Temporarily. Then there will be another issue in another place, or the same place. It’s just delaying it nothing is ultimately going to avert humans destroying the planet and/or ourselves one way or another.

Good thing to put it off as long as possible though.

Zelensky calling the shots? Wow

I'm pretty certain the invasion was by Russia. Zelensky is just doing his best to protect his country from destruction.

What would you be doing in his place?