British defense secretary Gavin Williamson strongly reaffirmed U.K. support for Ukraine and said the country doesn’t stand alone as he undertook a surprise working visit to the country’s south-eastern, Black Sea port city of Odesa on the afternoon of Dec. 21.
He met with Ukrainian Defense Minister Stepan Poltorak aboard the Ukrainian navy’s flagship, the Hetman Sahaydachniy, two days after a Royal Navy warship, HMS Echo, also arrived in the country while other British lawmakers began a tour of the troubled Azov Sea region.
“The reason that HMS Echo is here is that we, firstly, want to demonstrate the solidarity that we have with Ukraine and the fact that Ukraine doesn’t stand alone,” Williamson said, adding that other countries allied with Ukraine should join Britain in sending their ships to Ukraine. “But we also demonstrate our right to be able to come to ports such as Odesa, for freedom of navigation, the freedom for navies to be able to operate in the Black Sea,” he added. “This isn’t Russia’s sea – this is an international sea.”
Williamson also visited British sailors and marines aboard HMS Echo, currently docked in Odesa, before taking part in a joint security briefing on board the vessel, attended by British and Ukrainian defense officials and the United Kingdom’s Ambassador to Ukraine Judith Gough.
HMS Echo is now expected to take part in strategic maneuvers with allied Ukrainian ships in and around the country’s Black Sea territory that are designed to demonstrate Britain’s support for ensuring freedom of navigation in the region, defense officials have said.
The Royal Navy ship can stay in the Black Sea for up to 21 days since it arrived on Dec. 18 and is expected to then be replaced by its sister ship, HMS Enterprise, after that.
The Odesa visit was probably arranged on Nov. 21, when Williamson’s counterpart, Poltorak, visited London.
That visit took place shortly after Williamson had returned from a working visit to the Ukrainian frontline in the country’s east, but four days before the dramatic events of Nov. 25, when Russian ships attacked Ukrainian vessels in international waters, seizing three boats and capturing 24 of their sailors.
The defense secretary has taken a robust stance on the side of Ukraine, suggesting it has a common adversary in Russia with his country, Britain.
“As long as Ukraine faces Russian hostilities, it will find a steadfast partner in the United Kingdom,” he said.
“By continuing to work together, whether through training programs or military exercises, we help Ukraine to stand up for our shared values…Those values of freedom and democracy cannot be traded. I have witnessed on the front-line the effects of the conflict in the East and this has completely reinforced my support for Ukraine’s sovereignty, independence and territorial integrity.”
Britain’s defense ministry recently announced that it would be extending and expanding its military support and training programme for Ukraine, launched in 2015 and code-named Operation Orbital, up until at least the year 2020.
In four years, the mission has trained more than 9,500 Ukrainian soldiers, mentored by over 1,300 rotated British soldiers at different locations around Ukraine, British defense officials say.
The British Armed Forces also provide logistical and technical support to Ukraine and in 2019 will bolster this support by moving to strengthen the Ukrainian naval command, sending a U.K. Naval Attache to the country for the first time and deploying Royal Marine commandos on new training exercises along Ukraine’s coast.
On Dec. 20, two more British members of parliament – John Whittingdale and Michael Fallon – also arrived in Ukraine for an official visit to the troubled Sea of Azov region, the first delegation of lawmakers from a G7 country since the Russian aggression against Ukraine that took place on Nov. 25 in the Black Sea.
Whittingdale is a former, Conservative government minister and now Chairman of the U.K.-Ukraine All Party Parliamentary Committee in the U.K. House of Commons, while Fallon, also a Conservative politician, served as U.K. defense secretary from 2014 until 2017.
The two senior lawmakers are finishing up a two-day tour inspecting the security situation at the Sea of Azov port cities of Berdyansk and Mariupol, where Russian naval aggression has reportedly throttled commercial maritime traffic to a standstill.
Svitlana Zalishchuk, a member of the Committee for Foreign Affairs of Ukraine’s parliament, helped to coordinate the visit and said that the lawmakers are here, by Ukrainian invitation, to see for themselves the scale of Russia’s military escalation against the country.
“It is important for Ukraine, that our international partners see the reality of this new level of Russian escalation with their own eyes,” she told Kyiv Post.
