{"id":317781,"date":"2025-11-02T08:16:06","date_gmt":"2025-11-02T08:16:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=317781"},"modified":"2025-11-03T09:06:32","modified_gmt":"2025-11-03T09:06:32","slug":"ukraine-cannot-win-against-russia-warns-british-field-marshal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=317781","title":{"rendered":"Ukraine cannot win against Russia, warns British Field Marshal"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sam Kiley \u2013 The Independent Oct 19, 2025<\/strong><\/h1>\n
\"\"<\/div>\n

Ukraine<\/a> cannot win its war with Russia<\/a> and should negotiate peace terms with the Kremlin, according to Britain\u2019s most senior army officer.<\/p>\n

Field Marshal Lord Richards said Kyiv will not be able to drive Vladimir Putin<\/a>\u2019s soldiers out of Ukraine<\/a> without the help of Nato<\/a> forces \u2013 who won\u2019t get involved on the ground.<\/p>\n

Lord Richards, who was promoted to the UK military\u2019s most senior \u201cfive-star\u201d rank earlier this year and led Nato<\/a> forces during their troop surge in Afghanistan, said Ukraine\u2019s allies have failed Kyiv.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat we have done in the case of Ukraine is encourage Ukraine to fight, but not given them the means to win,\u201d the former chief of the defence staff<\/a> told The Independent\u2019s<\/em> podcast World of Trouble.<\/em><\/p>\n

Reflecting on Ukraine\u2019s chances of success against Russia<\/a>, he said: \u201cMy view is that they would not win.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cCould not win, even with the right resources?\u201d he was asked.<\/p>\n

\u201cNo,\u201d he replied.<\/p>\n

Pressed further by The Independent<\/em>, he was asked: \u201c Even with the right resources?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cNo, they haven\u2019t got the manpower,\u201d the former commando said.<\/p>\n

The field marshal\u2019s intervention came after Volodymyr Zelensky<\/a> flew to Washington DC to meet Donald Trump<\/a> to try to persuade him to give Ukraine Tomahawk cruise missiles.<\/p>\n

The war with Russia has now ground on for more than three years, with incremental gains on each side as the conflict is increasingly played out via drone warfare.<\/p>\n

But Zelensky\u2019s plans to pressure Trump appear to have been thwarted<\/a> by Vladimir Putin<\/a>, who spoke to the US president hours before his White House meeting with the Ukrainian leader.<\/p>\n

At a packed press conference, Trump appeared reluctant to give up American weapons, while retaining a cordial tone with Zelensky \u2013 admittedly a far cry from where things were in February. The US president stressed his own country\u2019s needs to maintain stockpiles.<\/p>\n

Zelensky said very little, except to politely suggest Ukraine could offer up its drone technology in an exchange agreement. Trump seemed open to the idea.<\/p>\n

Coming away from the summit, Zelensky said Trump had not said \u201cno\u201d to the idea of Tomahawks \u2013 but, for today, he did not say \u201cyes\u201d, either.<\/p>\n

In his first long-form podcast interview, Lord Richards, the only British officer to have commanded massed US troops at war since 1945, said the outlook for Ukraine was not good.<\/p>\n

\u201cUnless we were to go in with them \u2013 which we won\u2019t do because Ukraine is not an existential issue for us. It clearly is for the Russians, by the way,\u201d he said on World of Trouble<\/em>.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve decided because it\u2019s not an existential issue, we will not go to war. We are, you can argue \u2013 and I absolutely accept it \u2013 in some sort of hybrid war [with Russia]. But that\u2019s not the same as a shooting war in which our soldiers are dying in large numbers.<\/p>\n

\u201cDespite our attraction for all they\u2019ve achieved and our genuine affections for so many Ukrainians, I\u2019m just still in this school that says this is not in our vital national interests.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy instinct is that the best Ukraine can do, and you already see President Zelensky, who\u2019s an inspirational leader \u2026 the best they can do is a sort of a score draw.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lord Richards\u2019s pessimistic assessment contradicts recent statements from Trump<\/a> who had appeared to shift his view of Ukraine from insisting that Kyiv did not hold any cards \u2013 to saying Putin could not win.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think Ukraine, with the support of the European Union, is in a position to fight and WIN all of Ukraine back in its original form,\u201d Trump wrote on social media. \u201cWith time, patience, and the financial support of Europe and, in particular, Nato, the original Borders from where this War started, is very much an option.<\/p>\n

\u201cRussia has been fighting aimlessly for three and a half years a War that should have taken a Real Military Power less than a week to win. This is not distinguishing Russia. In fact, it is very much making them look like \u2018a paper tiger\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n

Trump has routinely changed his stance on Ukraine, previously cutting military aid to Kyiv altogether, forcing a painful minerals-for-weapons deal on Kyiv and reducing US help to an intelligence feed only.<\/p>\n

This week he appeared to swing back behind Putin again \u2013 agreeing to a summit with the Russian leader in pro-Kremlin Hungary under Viktor Orban but without the presence of Zelensky.<\/p>\n

He blamed it on the fact that Putin and Zelensky \u201cdon\u2019t get along too well\u201d and described himself as the \u201cmediator\u201d president.<\/p>\n

Trump has made repeated efforts to secure a ceasefire and even invited Putin to Alaska for a summit in August, which ended in American humiliation.<\/p>\n

Lord Richards, who led Britain\u2019s interventions in Sierra Leone and East Timor as a brigadier and later argued against the UK\u2019s part in the American-led invasion of Iraq, backed the former US General Mark Milley, who suggested back in November 2022 that Ukraine should negotiate with Russia.<\/p>\n

In a wide-ranging interview about his military life, the field marshal revealed that although his career had been stellar, there were times when he fell foul of \u201cthe establishment\u201d and was often out of step with his military and political masters.<\/p>\n

As a major general and deputy head of the army under General Sir Mike Jackson, he said it was clear to him that Tony Blair\u2019s government was lying about its claims that Saddam Hussein was developing nuclear weapons in Iraq.<\/p>\n

Alongside other senior officers, he questioned the legality of the UK\u2019s decision to join US forces in invading Iraq in 2003.<\/p>\n

Before the British joined the invasion, Blair presented parliament with an intelligence dossier which claimed the Iraqi dictator was developing a nuclear weapon.<\/p>\n

Derided since as the \u201cdodgy dossier\u201d for its unfounded claims, it caused horror at the time among senior officers who had access to the real intelligence.<\/p>\n

\u201cI and others encouraged the chief of defence staff to query whether this was legal and what was the basis of this intelligence,\u201d said Lord Richards.<\/p>\n

\u201cI do remember one officer \u2013 who I won\u2019t name but was on the intelligence side \u2013 saying, \u2018Don\u2019t worry. We\u2019ll find something to put.\u2019 Yeah, \u2018don’t worry. We\u2019ll find something about that. We\u2019ll justify what we were doing\u2019.<\/p>\n

\u201cI went back to say to Mike Jackson, \u2018This stinks.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

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

Proving that there are still some realists in Britain\u2019s military high command. Field Marshal Lord Richards claims that Ukraine has been given false hope by its Western allies and cannot overcome Russia. Even with the right equipment, he says, \u201cthey haven\u2019t got the manpower\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":[61,91,116],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-317781","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-Commentary","category-russia","category-ukraine"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/317781","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=317781"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/317781\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":317809,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/317781\/revisions\/317809"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=317781"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=317781"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=317781"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}