{"id":274030,"date":"2023-10-04T07:36:21","date_gmt":"2023-10-04T07:36:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=274030"},"modified":"2023-10-05T06:08:36","modified_gmt":"2023-10-05T06:08:36","slug":"britain-has-run-out-of-arms-to-send-to-ukraine","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=274030","title":{"rendered":"Britain has \u2018run out of arms to send to Ukraine\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

Danielle Sheridan, Joe Barnes \u2013 The Telegraph Oct 2, 2023<\/strong><\/h1>\n

Britain has run out of defence equipment to donate to Ukraine<\/a> and other countries should step in and shoulder more of the burden, a senior military chief has said.<\/p>\n

The comments come after Ben Wallace<\/a> revealed that he asked Rishi Sunak to spend \u00a32.3 billion more on support for Ukraine before he resigned as defence secretary last month.<\/p>\n

Mr Wallace warned that the UK had been overtaken by Germany as the biggest European military donor<\/a> to Ukraine as he called for the 50 per cent increase on funding that the UK has committed so far.<\/p>\n

The Western alliance has suffered a series of blows in recent days, with support for Ukraine dropped from a US stop-gap budget bill, election success for a pro-Russian party in Slovakia and rows between Poland and Kyiv over grain supplies.<\/p>\n

On Monday, the Kremlin claimed that Western fatigue with the war \u201cwill grow\u201d. The White House replied that Vladimir Putin was wrong to think he could outlast the pro-Kyiv alliance.<\/p>\n

\u2018We\u2019ve given away all we can afford\u2019<\/strong><\/h2>\n

Last night a senior military source told The Telegraph<\/em> that the onus should not be on the UK to provide the \u201cbillions\u201d Mr Wallace has called for.<\/p>\n

\u201cGiving billions more doesn\u2019t mean giving billions of British kit,\u201d they said, adding that the UK had a role to play in \u201cencouraging other nations to give more money and weapons\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve given away just about as much as we can afford,\u201d they added.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe will continue to source equipment to provide for Ukraine, but what they need now is things like air defence assets and artillery ammunition and we\u2019ve run dry on all that.\u201d<\/p>\n

On Monday Mr Sunak was forced to insist that the UK\u2019s commitment to Ukraine would not \u201cwaver\u201d in the light of Mr Wallace\u2019s comments.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou will continue to see us provide substantial support,\u201d his official spokesman told reporters.<\/p>\n

Shapps adamant<\/strong><\/h2>\n

Meanwhile Grant Shapps, the Defence Secretary, said Putin would be \u201cfoolish\u201d to believe that internal political rows in the West were a sign that support for Ukraine was beginning to crack.<\/p>\n

He suggested the possibility of Donald Trump winning the next US election would not necessarily result in the \u201cworst-case scenario\u201d of America cutting its support.<\/p>\n

The UK has already committed 14 Challenger 2 tanks, M270 multiple-launch rocket systems, a heavy-lift drone and Storm Shadow cruise missiles to Ukraine since the start of the Russian onslaught.<\/p>\n

Thousands of anti-tank weapons, short-range missiles and armoured vehicles have also been given by the UK to Ukraine.<\/p>\n

\u2018Every tank we give is one less we have\u2019<\/strong><\/h2>\n

The military chief said there was no prospect of providing more British tanks to Ukraine.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve given away pretty much everything we can afford to give,\u201d they added.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Challenger 2s that we have will become Challenger 3,\u201d they said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe need them to upgrade them to become Challenger 3. Every tank we give away is one less that we have.\u201d<\/p>\n

The growing concerns over Western funding for Ukraine threatened to overshadow what was described as a \u201chistoric meeting\u201d of EU foreign ministers in Kyiv.<\/p>\n

Call for co-operation<\/strong><\/h2>\n

Volodymyr Zelensky, Ukraine\u2019s president, told them his country\u2019s victory over its Russian occupiers \u201cexplicitly depends on our co-operation\u201d after the US Congress passed an emergency spending bill that will cut off aid for Ukraine from next month, unless further agreements are approved on Capitol Hill.<\/p>\n

The EU\u2019s top foreign diplomat, Josep Borrell, insisted that the bloc\u2019s support for Kyiv would be steadfast amid the upheaval in Washington.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are facing an existential threat. Ukrainians are fighting with all their courage and capabilities, and if we want them to succeed we must give them better weapons, and faster,\u201d he told reporters in Kyiv before the gathering.<\/p>\n

\u201cI am hopeful that this decision is not final and that the US will continue to support Ukraine,\u201d Mr Borrell added.<\/p>\n

Brussels last month overtook the US in promised aid to Kyiv, with European commitments now twice as large, according to the Kiel Institute for the World Economy, a German think tank that has been tracking funding for Ukraine.<\/p>\n

Cracks in support<\/strong><\/h2>\n

The shift came as the EU promised to provide Ukraine with \u20ac50 billion (\u00a343 billion) in long-term aid until 2027.<\/p>\n

The EU and Nato both have concerns about cracks in support as the conflict drags into its 20th month.<\/p>\n

Pro-Russian populist Robert Fico won a national election in Slovakia, a member of both organisations, and promised not to send \u201canother bullet\u201d of military aid to Ukraine.<\/p>\n

Hungary, whose leader celebrated Mr Fico\u2019s victory, was also holding up a planned \u20ac500 million tranche of funding to help EU member states pay for weapons donations.<\/p>\n

Its opposition has also dealt a blow to a planned \u20ac20 billion war chest from EU nations for Ukraine to buy weapons for the next four years, highlighting the challenges faced by the West.<\/p>\n

Source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Continued western military support for Ukraine is now in jeopardy. As a senior UK military source says, \u201cWe\u2019ve given away pretty much everything we can afford to give\u201d. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":39262,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[91,116],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-274030","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-russia","category-ukraine"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/274030","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/39262"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=274030"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/274030\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":274039,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/274030\/revisions\/274039"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=274030"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=274030"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=274030"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}