Has Keir Starmer dropped the ball on Ukraine? Dmytro Kuleba, the Ukrainian former foreign minister, certainly thinks so. Kuleba, who stepped down from his post in September, had few kind words to say this week about how Starmer’s Labour government had dealt with Ukraine in the five months or so since coming to power:
The Conservatives were coordinating with the Americans but they did not restrict themselves to just following the Americans. This is the change that came with Labour. They took a position they would follow the Americans.
It is stirring and laudable to promise to support Ukraine ‘for as long as it takes’
The immediate cause of Kuleba’s frustration was Starmer’s delay over the decision to allow Ukraine to use its UK-supplied Storm Shadow cruise missiles against Russian targets without restriction. In September, when the Prime Minister visited President Joe Biden in Washington, there was a surge in optimism that an announcement to this effect was imminent, but hopes were dashed. It was not until two months later in late November, after Biden lifted similar conditions on the use of MGM-140 Army Tactical Missile System (ATACMS), that the Ukrainian armed forces had free use of the weapons.
Is Kuleba’s charge fair? The government insists that they have been ‘taking a leading role in supporting Ukraine, which is why the Prime Minister committed £3 billion a year of military support for Ukraine ‘for as long as it takes’. Downing Street’s counter-argument consists of the £3 billion of military assistance mentioned above, a pledge that the United Kingdom will spend more in aid to Ukraine in 2025 than ever before and a reminder that Starmer has met President Volodymyr Zelensky six times since taking office in July, including hosting the Ukrainian leader twice in London.
It is certainly right to note the government’s continued extensive military, diplomatic, humanitarian support and other assistance to Ukraine. £3 billion in military aid for 2024/25 is an increase on the £4.8 billion previously provided overall in 2022/23 and 2023/24. In addition, under Operation Interflex, the UK has now trained 50,000 Ukrainian service personnel, and the programme is set to continue at least to the later part of next year. It is also beneficial that military assistance is now in place for the next six financial years, which should allow Ukraine a degree of coherent and realistic forward planning.
We would be mistaken, however, to see these numbers in the abstract. The conflict in Ukraine, like any war, has ebbed and flowed. The widely anticipated Ukrainian counter-offensive which began in June 2023 recaptured some territory from Russian forces in Donetsk and Zaporizhzhia oblasts but more broadly did not fulfil the high hopes placed upon it.
Some Russian retrenchment was followed by the bold incursion by Ukrainian units across the border around Kursk in August this year. However, Ukraine’s advance has run out of steam recently and around half of the territory captured has now been retaken by Russia. Russia President Vladimir Putin has intensified air and missile strikes on Ukrainian civilian populations and inflicted substantial damage on the electricity network and other infrastructure, including a large-scale attack with cruise missiles and drones last week.
Although Russian casualties are enormous – British estimates place the numer of killed and wounded at 700,000 – Ukraine is also under pressure. The level of Western assistance being supplied has to be considered in the context of what Ukraine needs to maintain its war machine.
Moreover, if we are genuinely Ukraine’s allies, we cannot airily dismiss criticism by someone who was the country’s foreign minister for four and a half years. Kuleba described an encounter over the use of Storm Shadow missiles as ‘the only unpleasant conversation I had with British officials… and it was the first unpleasant conversation since the beginning of the full-scale invasion’. He admitted the possibility that the ‘new government was cautious and they didn’t want to rush with decisions’.
There is a poignancy in Kuleba’s appeal to the British government ‘to allow itself to lead conversations with the Americans on Ukraine, not only follow the decisions the United States are taking’. Underlying his anxiety, however, is a more fundamental question which Starmer has not yet addressed.
It is stirring and laudable to promise to support Ukraine ‘for as long as it takes’, as the Prime Minister has done repeatedly. But what does that mean? As long as what takes? It is not at all clear that Whitehall has thought explicitly about its preferred endgame for the conflict. Complete Russian military reversal seems extremely unlikely, yet equally it would be deeply damaging if the war was concluded by an arrangement which left Putin in possession of most of the territory his army has illegally annexed.
Starmer presumably does not mean that Britain is ready to maintain its current stance into the 2030s and beyond. Next month Donald Trump will be inaugurated again as president of the United States, and he is expected to be much more sceptical about the extent of American support for Ukraine. The Prime Minister may then face a choice: does the UK follow its ally’s lead, or set a very different course based on supporting Ukraine ‘for as long as it takes’? Over the next few months he will need to show whether he is leading or following, and he has set the rhetorical bar for himself high.
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