The betrayal of Ukraine is a final warning to the UK and its continental allies to put a lot more energy and money into rebuilding their defences<\/p>\n
It was, Sir Keir Starmer told members of his inner circle, one of his most meaningful visits abroad. In the middle of last month, he flew to Kyiv to double-down on the commitment to back Ukraine\u2019s struggle for freedom, a pledge he first made a defining feature of his leadership when Labour was in opposition. Hands were warmly clasped with Volodymyr Zelenskyy, wailing air raid sirens greeted a Russian drone attack, financial promises were made, and signatures were inscribed on a 100-year partnership<\/a> treaty. The prime minister solemnly intoned the western mantra about backing the resistance to Russian tyranny \u201cfor as long as it takes\u201d for Ukraine to become \u201cfree and thriving once again\u201d.<\/p>\n All of which now sounds for the birds, thanks to Donald Trump. It was with his trademark contempt for his country\u2019s traditional allies that the US president blindsided them by announcing that he had initiated peace negotiations<\/a> with Vladimir Putin over the heads of Ukraine and the European members of Nato. The UK received no more warning of this bombshell than anyone else. So much for the vaunted \u201cspecial relationship\u201d. The US defence secretary, Pete Hegseth, then unleashed another punch to the solar plexus of European security by publicly declaring<\/a> that Ukraine would have to accept the surrender of large chunks of its territory and should forget about becoming a member of Nato. The future defence of Ukraine, he went on to declare, would be down to Europe, because the US wouldn\u2019t be sending any of its troops to sustain a security guarantee.<\/p>\n Continue reading…<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The betrayal of Ukraine is a final warning to the UK and its continental allies to put a lot more energy and money into rebuilding their defences It was, Sir Keir Starmer told members of his inner circle, one of his most meaningful visits abroad. In the middle of last month, he flew to Kyiv … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-33471","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33471","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=33471"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33471\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33471"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33471"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33471"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}