Western allies must bolster Ukraine’s front line ahead of potential peace talks next year amid fears that Europe will not be able to shoulder the war effort alone, defence experts believe.
The election of Donald Trump earlier this month has increasingly shifted talk away from helping Kyiv win the war against Russia and towards putting Ukraine in the strongest negotiating position for expected peace talks next year.
The president-elect has vowed to stop spending US money to the Ukrainian war effort, and insisted he will be able to secure a peace deal with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
The Foreign Secretary David Lammy and his French counterpart Jean-Noël Barrot have written an article for i, stating the UK and France will “do everything that is necessary to put Ukraine in the best position to achieve a just and lasting peace”.
Defence experts told i the pivot means the UK, EU and the US Biden administration will seek to provide Ukraine with as much support as possible to ensure it has a strong hand when it comes to talks with Moscow.
Lord Ricketts, the former national security adviser, said that talk of Ukraine winning the war was “not credible” and that the focus for the UK, France and Europe should be to try to influence Trump’s peace plan for Ukraine when he enters the White House.
The crossbench peer said that Europe does not have the arms industry to fill the void should the US pull its support for the war effort, and said the focus should now be on getting Ukraine’s troops through another crucial winter.
He said the West’s strategy will now be to give “every possible” support in the coming months to halt the “kilometre by kilometre advance” by the Russian forces, and to try to deter “further Russian attacks on [Ukrainian] energy infrastructure”.
“So getting Ukraine through the winter in the best shape possible and into the best position for when some sort of negotiation potentially develops in the first months of a Trump presidency,” he said.
The Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has increasingly raised the prospect of a diplomatic solution to the conflict in recent weeks in the wake of the Trump victory.
Helping Ukraine hold Russian territory, such as the approximately 300 square miles of the Kursk border region, is also being viewed as strategically crucial for Ukraine ahead of any peace talks with Putin.
Both the US and UK have sanctioned the use of long-range missiles in the region this week after they deemed Russia had escalated the conflict by deploying North Korean troops to the area.
Some 10,000 North Korean soldiers have been drafted in for combat but are widely seen as cannon fodder used to wear down Ukrainian military supplies.
There are concerns among defence sources that supplies of conventional ordnance are beginning to dry up as the war effort in both Ukraine and the Middle East is taking its toll on US stocks.
According to the shadow Defence Secretary James Cartlidge, the UK could continue to support the Ukraine war effort with its drone capacity.
“I do think drones is an area where there is still capacity in the UK defence industry,” Cartilage said. “Whereas missiles are so complex, drones are simpler and can be produced in greater scale and have been shown to be crucial in this war.”
He said that it was important that the West recognises the “challenge” Ukraine faces in Kursk, adding: “The absolute focus at the moment should be on the days and weeks ahead of the fight that’s happening right now, so that we give Ukraine all possible support from ourselves and our allies.”
Sir Keir Starmer insisted on Friday that the UK was “not at war” with Russia in a week that has seen a major escalation in the conflict.
The Prime Minister held talks on Friday with Nato Secretary-General Mark Rutte about Ukraine where the pair spoke of the “importance of putting the country in the strongest possible position going into the winter”.
They also spoke of the deployment of North Korean troops in Ukraine, which they said further underlined the “indivisibility of Euro-Atlantic and Indo-Pacific security”.
