LONDON — In a speech broadcast over the radio in February 1941, Britain’s most famous wartime leader, Winston Churchill, had a message for the country and its American allies as his island nation stood alone against the advance of fascism throughout Europe and beyond.
“Give us the tools, and we will finish the job,” he famously said.
For some months prior, the U.S. had been providing military supplies and other assistance to the U. K. In December 1941, the Americans entered the war, decisively turning the tide against fascist forces in Europe and Asia.
These days, Ukraine’s soldiers and military leaders — who argue that they are fighting Russia’s expansionist ambitions to a stalemate along a new, European frontier in the eastern Donbas region — are asking for the tools they need to finish that job.
Ukraine has been receiving a lot of military assistance from its Euro-Atlantic partners and allies, particularly the United States. Washington has provided Javelin anti-tank missiles, armoured vehicles and even boats, as well as training missions for Ukrainian soldiers.
But there is still a degree of frustration among Ukrainian decision-makers and some of their Western counterparts who feel that more could be done — especially by European allies — to build Ukraine’s resilience and help it defend not only itself, but the European continent too.
“We have to deter Russian aggression and restore our borders,” said Major General Borys Kremenetskyi, a Ukrainian military veteran and now Defence Attaché at the Ukrainian Embassy in London.
“The United Kingdom has shown very strong support for Ukraine,” he added.
This is important because Ukrainian soldiers are defending not only their own country, but European sovereignty too.
“When the last Ukrainian soldier falls, Putin will come for you,” Kremenetskyi said, citing a slogan he said was used by the Ukrainian diaspora in London during a recent protest outside the U. K. Ministry of Defence.
“We do not ask for foreign soldiers to fight for us — we are fighting for ourselves. What we do ask for is support,” he said.
A European war
Throughout Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region, some 5.2 million Ukrainian civilians are still caught up in the Kremlin’s war against the country, and the United Nations says that 3.5 million need urgent humanitarian assistance. The war has claimed about 13,000 lives, according to the most recent data.
Along the 300-mile contact line, which has become a de-facto illegal border between Europe’s largest nation and Russia, some 65,000 Ukrainian soldiers have fought Moscow’s proxy forces and its regular troops to a tense stalemate.
But to the east and north-east, hundreds of Russian tanks and assembled warplanes stand ready for a blitz on Ukraine, should the Kremlin order it.
In September 2018, U. K. Defense Secretary Gavin Williamson visited Ukraine’s front-line in the Donbas and talked with Ukrainian soldiers there. Less than 200 meters away, Russian-backed forces were holed up in their positions and sniper’s nests.
Major General Borys Kremenetskyi accompanied Williamson on that trip.
“We believe that this is the front-line for Europe — I am telling this to people in London and Brussels. If you measure the distance from Brussels to Rome, or to Kyiv, it is the same. Ukraine is not somewhere far from Europe,” Kremenetskyi said.
In Westminster, there is broad agreement with Kremenetskyi’s position.
After the U.S., the U.K. ties with Canada as the second largest provider of military aid to Ukraine. It is certainly the largest in Europe.
Borders changed by force
Since March 2014, when Russia invaded and annexed the Crimean peninsula, Russian forces and Russia-backed militants have occupied about a third of Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts.
Faced with less resistance, Moscow’s forces would likely not have stopped in eastern Ukraine, Kremenetskyi believes.
“The whole of Europe is under threat,” he said, pointing to Russian military manoeuvres against Georgia and near the Baltic states, in the North Sea, close to Scandinavia and throughout the southern Black Sea region.
“I think that Ukraine is contributing… to the security of the European continent and to the transatlantic community’s security,” said Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Ivanna Klympush-Tsintsadze, when asked about the country’s efforts to oppose Russian aggression.
“Ukraine has been holding the line,” she said, “allowing NATO to regroup and reflect on what is happening and to come up with a strategy.”
British allies
Judith Gough, the British ambassador to Ukraine, argues that there is no safe Europe without a safe Ukraine.
“Our focus is very much on supporting Ukraine and helping Ukraine build her resilience,” she told the Kyiv Post in a recent interview.
In the last year, the U.K. and Canada have been the joint contact points to NATO for Ukraine. Gough says they have been working closely together and with Ukraine.
Under her ambassadorship, which began in 2015, the U.K. launched a multimillion-dollar annual assistance package to the country, which includes a major defense assistance program.
That program will be renewed through 2020 and is now pivoting to the maritime and naval areas, Gough said, where Ukraine seeks help in bolstering its coastal defense.
“British advisers in Kyiv are working to help Ukraine increase the country’s resilience and plan its defense, while also helping implement broader defense reforms,” said Kremenetskyi. Rank and file soldiers were benefiting a lot from U.K. training, he added.
“Down at the tactical level, is Operation Orbital, and that is what is mostly focused on training Ukrainian soldiers,” he added.
Gough says the mission has trained at least 10,000 Ukrainian soldiers and is now starting to pay closer attention to sailors and naval officers. The U. K. defense ministry very recently revised that figure up to 13,000 Ukrainian soldiers.
Kremenetskyi says that those who have been trained are now training others, causing a ripple effect of boosted expertise across the whole Ukrainian military. He also said that some Ukrainian personnel were being educated in the U.K., even at exclusive naval academies.
Klympush-Tsintsadze says that British efforts, alongside other NATO partners, are helping to rebuild the Ukrainian armed forces in the wake of Russia’s attacks on Crimea, but also after years of deliberate mismanagement that, she says, verged on sabotage.
“They were being built up from less than nothing,” she said. “We were rebuilding something that was consciously destroyed by the former authorities under (ousted Ukrainian President) Viktor Yanukovich.”
Edge of freedom
Michael Fallon, a British political heavyweight and lawmaker in the country’s governing Conservative party, is proud of U.K.’s support for Ukraine. He fought hard to get it up-and-running, but suggests there is still room to do more and to provide more.
Fallon, who launched Operation Orbital while he was U. K. Secretary of State for Defense between 2014 and 2017, also recognizes that Ukrainians are fighting in defense of Europe, not only Ukraine.
“That’s why I sent Royal Air Force Typhoons down to (be stationed in) Romania, for Black Sea patrolling… that’s why we and NATO constantly encouraged Ukraine along the reform path, with a view obviously to a closer relationship with NATO,” he said.
The former defense secretary said that starting Operation Orbital was not easy. There was hesitation among some in the U.K. coalition government at that time. Being “too provocative” towards Russia was a constant concern for some.
“It took a long time to widen the categories of training that we were able to offer… and to encourage eastern European countries to contribute arms and ammunition — which we did the lifts (transportation) for,” he said.
These days, as the Ukrainian armed forces become more capable and experienced, they want to move beyond Warsaw Pact equipment and bring their forces more in line with NATO standards.
“The United States is not providing only training — they are providing substantial material assistance, which the U.K. doesn’t provide,” said Kremenetskyi. His soldiers in the east would benefit from air defense systems, anti-ship missiles and equipment to counter electronic warfare, he added.
Fallon is also somewhat disappointed with the international support for Ukraine and says more needs to be done, especially in the wake of aggression against the country’s naval forces and civilian shipping in the Black and Azov seas.
“I continue to press ministers here to better coordinate the EU’s response,” he said.
He is visible frustrated with the slow response to Russian naval forces attacking Ukrainian ships and seizing their sailors near the Kerch Strait on Nov. 25. He says these sailors’ detention violates all international rules.
“It is disappointing that we have not had more action from the West — it was weak anyway, only deploring the attack,” Fallon said. “One way or another, the EU or NATO need to do something to lift this blockade.”
Fallon strongly believes that Ukraine’s international allies can and should act more robustly in the country’s defense.
“They (the United States) have been more muscular, there is no question about it, and we need to be equally muscular — this is our fight, in the end… We are a European country and Kyiv is a European capital,” he said.
“Ukraine — it’s the edge of freedom,” Fallon concluded.
