Britain to send 8,000 troops to Eastern Europe
Exercises to deter Russia announced as UK national is killed fighting in Ukraine
BRITAIN is sending 8,000 troops to Eastern Europe in one of the largest deployments since the Cold War.
Tanks, artillery, armoured assault vehicles and aircraft are also being dispatched, bolstering Nato forces in what Ben Wallace, the Defence Secretary, described as a “show of solidarity and strength”.
The deployment, intended as a “deterrence of Russian aggression”, was announced last night, on a day when a former serviceman became the first British national to be confirmed dead in the war in Ukraine.
Scott Sibley, 36, who served with the Royal Marines, is thought to have died in Russian shelling in Mykolaiv in the south of the country. His former regiment said that he had “showed commando spirit until the end”. Mr Sibley leaves behind a young daughter who has been suffering from a rare form of cancer. He had devoted much of his time to raising funds for charities that had helped his family.
Last night the Foreign Office confirmed that a second Briton was missing. Both men had been serving with a brigade of Ukraine’s international legion of foreign recruits, military sources in the war zone said.
Russia renewed its attacks on Kyiv yesterday evening, with missiles striking the capital during an official visit by António Guterres, the UN secretarygeneral. A Ukrainian official described the strikes as a “postcard from Moscow” and questioned why Russia remained a member of the UN Security Council.
The announcement that Britain will conduct large-scale exercises in Europe, from Finland to North Macedonia, reinforces the warning to Vladimir Putin not to attack Nato territories. The operation, called Exercise Hedgehog, begins next month with British forces joining 18,000 Nato troops on the Estonia-latvia border. One thousand soldiers have also been sent to Poland under Exercise Defender and 2,500 paratroopers to North Macedonia on Exercise Swift Response.
Lt-gen Ralph Wooddisse, one of the most senior commanders in the Army, said: “The UK makes a significant contribution to the defence of Europe and the deterrence of Russian aggression. The scale of the deployment … will deter aggression at a scale not seen in Europe this century.”
Mr Wallace said: “The security of Europe has never been more important. These exercises will see our troops join forces … in a show of solidarity and strength in one of the largest shared deployments since the Cold War.”
In a further message to the Kremlin, nuclear-powered attack submarines from the Royal Navy, the US and France have berthed in Faslane naval base on the Clyde, home to the UK’S strategic deterrent. This week, HMS Audacious, an Astute-class hunter-killer boat, was seen loading Tomahawk missiles in Gibraltar. The submarines are all understood to be preparing to take part in exercises in the north Atlantic, which are due to start in the coming days.
Mr Putin’s propaganda and intelligence chiefs yesterday said the war was likely to end in a nuclear strike and accused the US and Poland of threatening to annex the west of Ukraine.
With the invasion entering its third month, Sergey Naryshkin, the head of the SVR, Russia’s equivalent of MI6, said a “coalition of the willing”, including the US, would seek to annex a chunk of Ukraine. Margarita Simonyan, the head of the state-owned television network RT, said she believed a third world war was “the likeliest scenario”.
In another development yesterday, the Russian authorities in Kherson said that they would switch the region’s payments to the rouble, in the biggest indication to date that Moscow intends to extend jurisdiction to parts of Ukraine.
In a sign that the US will continue to support Volodymyr Zelensky’s government in Kyiv, Joe Biden said he was asking Congress for $33billion (£26billion) to pay for the war, more than twice the $13.6billion aid approved last month.
The US President said: “The cost of this fight is not cheap, but caving to aggression is going to be more costly.”
Mr Biden said the US was determined to continue helping Ukraine and pointed out that Washington had sent 10 anti-tank weapons for every Russian tank deployed in Ukraine.
Mr Biden’s support was backed by Nato yesterday with Jens Stoltenberg, the secretary-general, insisting the alliance would help Ukraine for years to come, including a shift from deliveries of Soviet-era weapons to more modern Western arms and systems.
Britain is expected to send anti-ship Brimstone missiles to Ukraine over fears that a Russian blockade of the Black Sea could lead to a rise in food prices. The latest intelligence assessment from the Ministry of Defence suggests 20 Russian navy vessels are in the Black Sea, including submarines.
Asked on Sky News about the supply of weapons to Ukraine, Mr Wallace replied: “We have said we will source and supply, if we can, anti-ship missiles. It’s incredibly important that grain that affects us all [through] food prices, does get out of Ukraine.”
But Mr Wallace appeared in disagreement with Liz Truss, the Foreign Secretary, that Moscow’s forces must be pushed out of “the whole of Ukraine”.
Mr Wallace said: “I think what I would certainly say is, we are supporting Ukraine’s sovereign integrity.
“But you know, first and foremost, let’s get Russia out of where they are now in its invasion plans.”