No deal between Moscow and Kiev – London
Britain will not support any solution to the conflict between Russia and Ukraine that involves what it sees as concessions to Moscow, Defense Secretary Grant Shapps told Times Radio on Tuesday.
The UK has been among the largest arms donors to Kiev. In recent weeks, London has stepped up its rhetoric by saying that British weapons supplied to Ukraine may be used for attacks deep inside Russia. Moscow recently summoned the UK ambassador over the matter and warned of possible retaliation, including strikes targeting “any British military facilities and equipment” in Ukraine and beyond.
Earlier on Tuesday, Shapps confirmed that Kiev could use British-supplied weapons to strike Russia’s Crimean Peninsula. London considers the region, which joined Russia in 2014 following a referendum, to be an “integral part of Ukraine,” the defense secretary stated.
Asked by Times Radio whether London would consider any agreement between Moscow and Kiev, Shapps rejected the idea. He added that the UK sees “no sense at all” in persuading or “strong-arming” Ukraine into accepting any peace conditions and “giving up some of their territory.”
Apart from Crimea, four other former Ukrainian territories – two Donbass republics and Kherson and Zaporozhye Regions – joined Russia in autumn 2022 following a series of referendums. Kiev called the votes a “sham” and claims all four regions and Crimea as its own.
On Tuesday, Shapps maintained that the only way to end the conflict was by inflicting a military defeat on Russia. “I do not think it is plausible at all for [Russian President Vladimir] Putin to win this war,” he said, calling for increased arms shipments to Ukraine.
“It is very, very important that the US follows the UK lead. Remember: we’ve just increased our money to Ukraine this year to £3 billion ($3.78 billion), our biggest-ever package,” the defense secretary said, referring to an earlier announcement by Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, who committed to spend that sum on military support for Ukraine per year.
Shapps also indirectly compared modern Russia to Nazi Germany by saying that “we have been in this position before in Europe and we will simply not allow that to happen again.”
“If you give a bully like Putin an inch, he will take a mile. In this case, he will probably take quite a lot, not just Ukraine. I’m not sure he will stop there either,” Shapps added.
In the years prior to World War II, Western nations are seen as having sought to appease Adolf Hitler, most notably through the infamous 1938 Munich Agreement, under which Germany, Italy, Great Britain, and France coerced Czechoslovakia into surrendering its border regions to Germany.
Russia has repeatedly stated throughout the conflict that its goals are to protect the people of Donbass against persecution by Kiev and ensure its own security in light of constant NATO expansion toward its borders. Moscow has also repeatedly pointed to the nationalist nature of the Western-backed post-Maidan governments in Kiev that have persecuted Russian-speaking minorities in Ukraine.
