The UK announced on Thursday, June 30, 2022, that it will provide an additional £1bn in military aid for Ukraine, a near-doubling in its support for the fight against Russia’s invasion.
The new funding takes the military aid given to Kyiv to £2.3bn, and the UK also spent £1.5bn in humanitarian and economic support for Ukraine. Boris Johnson said British spending is “transforming Ukraine’s defences”.
The pledge came after Ukraine’s President, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, urged NATO leaders to do more to help Ukraine’s war effort. Mr. Zelenskyy told NATO leaders that the monthly cost of defence for Ukraine was around $5bn (£4.12bn). Per records, the UK is second to the US in terms of military aid for Ukraine, with the US recently approving a $40bn (£33bn) package of support.
Support from the UK
Initially, the UK supplied Ukraine with anti-tank missiles, but now it is providing more heavy weaponry. The new British aid will go towards paying for “sophisticated air defence systems”, drones, electronic warfare equipment, and “thousands of pieces of vital kit”, the UK government disclosed.
The UK government intimated that the new £1bn is set to come from departmental underspends, plus £95 million from the Welsh and Scottish governments’ budgets. An “underspend” means departments spent less than anticipated, not that government finances were in surplus overall. Public sector borrowing was £151.8bn in the year ending March 2022, according to the Office for National Statistics.
Announcing the extra support, the government claimed the equipment is the first step to helping Ukraine recover territory lost to Russia, on top of their “valiant defence”. But questions still lingering is about whether the aid will be sufficient.
Comments from the NATO Summit
Addressing NATO leaders at their summit in Madrid on Wednesday, June 29, 2022, Mr. Zelenskyy. Who joined the meeting via a video link, said they need more modern weapons systems and artillery to “break the Russian artillery advantage”. Mr. Zelenskyy pointed out that “Russia still receives billions every day and spends them on war. We have a multibillion-dollar deficit, we don’t have oil and gas to cover it,” Mr. Zelensky pointed out.
Also speaking in the Spanish capital, Mr. Johnson said “Putin’s brutality continued to take Ukrainian lives and threaten peace and security across Europe”.
“As Putin fails to make the gains he had anticipated and hoped for and the futility of this war becomes clear to all, his attacks against the Ukrainian people are increasingly barbaric. UK weapons, equipment and training are transforming Ukraine’s defences against this onslaught.”
UK Prime Minister, Borris Johnson
Foreign Secretary, Liz Truss, told reporters that the UK’s contribution would enable the Ukrainians to succeed as “they are not just fighting for themselves, they are fighting for all of us”.
However, when asked if £1bn was anywhere near enough the amount needed by Ukraine, she said the UK was helping the nation kickstart its economy and reconstruct. She added that “It’s not a blank cheque and we are providing specific amounts of funding… we’ve been very clear with them we will not let them down”, emphasizing that “We will continue to support them in the long term in whichever way we can, in a way that we can afford”.
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