Slowly but surely, Britain is dragged deeper into another conflict in the Middle East started by a foolish United States president. Last week, in wake of a Houthi attack on an airport in Riyadh that killed 13 people, the Government said it was sending fighter jets and military advisers from our shrivelled Armed Forces to Saudi Arabia. This builds on existing efforts to help defend the Gulf kingodom including deployment of air defence equipment to protect against drone and missile attacks. Wes Streeting, the Defence Secretary, rightly said it was “absolutely despicable” to target an airport and showed how the Iran-aligned Houthis were escalating this regional war.
Our jets already help defend Bahrain, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates. Other Western nations such as France, Italy and Australia also sprang to the defence of Gulf states after Donald Trump joined Israel to launch his calamitous war on Iran that is squeezing oil supplies and pushing up global prices. Yet this poses a profound question: why are we rushing to protect feudal dictatorships but failing to send forces to help defend a democracy on our own continent that is fighting for survival after invasion by a ghastly regime that is guilty of grotesque war crimes?
The answer exposes a glaring gap between the rhetoric and reality of support for Ukraine. British and Western politicians love to visit Kyiv, meet wounded soldiers and proclaim their support for a brave nation on the front line of a global battle between democracy and dictatorship. This is the clearest and most crucial struggle between good and evil seen on our continent for eight decades – and very different to the contentious, morally-complex Middle Eastern war. Now Moscow is escalating its attacks on civilians – casualties almost doubling last month over the previous year – and becoming even more brazen in its hybrid war against the rest of Europe designed to test Nato, destabilise democracies and fracture support for Ukraine.
Yet still our leaders – so quick to send jets and military personnel to defend oil-rich potentates in the Gulf, despite their internal repression and often-corrosive global influence – shy away from similar defensive actions to help people in a brutalised European nation fighting for freedom. Never mind that the situation on our continent has become so serious that our Government is urging citizens to stock up on food and water in case of “emergencies” while intelligence chiefs warn Russia’s threat is intensifying. Nor indeed that a warped White House is openly supporting Vladimir Putin, shrugging off slightest pretence it is even a neutral player under a president in thrall to dictators and obscenely focused on personal enrichment – while Elon Musk proves the danger of letting a private citizen become so powerful with his satellite systems.
There is a plan, developed by former Royal Air Force experts in tandem with Kyiv’s military, to create a shield over Kyiv, the key southern port of Odesa and western regions far from the front line. This could protect crucial exports and reopen Lviv airport as well as save lives. “Ukraine’s air defence is Europe’s first line of defence,” Valérie Hayer, leader of the Renew group of liberal MEPs in Brussels, reminded European Council President António Costa. “A European Sky Shield for Ukraine would give concrete meaning to that principle by protecting its cities and vital infrastructure against Russian missiles and drones.”
Poland’s foreign minister, Radek Sikorski also backs calls for the West to shoot down Russian missiles and drones in Ukrainian airspace before they reach Polish airspace. Separately, Justin Bronk, an aviation expert at the Royal United Services Institute, recently argued that “the need for something new is beyond debate” given increasing drone incursions into Nato airspace. “A dedicated multinational Nato squadron of armed jet trainers could shoot down Russian drone incursions without burning through frontline fighters and scarce air-to-air missiles,” he wrote last month, setting out a strategy to combat Moscow’s lethal swarms of jet-powered airborne weapons.
Western support for Ukraine’s existential struggle has been sluggish and hesitant, going back to the speed with which it restored relations with the Kremlin after the theft of Crimea in 2014. Following the full-scale invasion eight years later, Kyiv had to plead for money and weapons from weak leaders intimidated by Putin’s threats of escalation, delivering sufficient support to stave off defeat but never enough for Ukraine to win while still pumping billions into the Kremlin’s war chest by buying its gas and oil. Even now, despite stepping up to plug gaps in financial and military support caused by a rogue US president, Europe refuses to release about €240bn (£201bn) held in frozen Russian assets.
Putin is playing a long game after seeing his plan to rapidly seize Ukraine defeated, helped by his stooge in the White House and fawning American peacemakers who sickeningly praise this bloodstained war criminal as a humanitarian. So this fascistic despot ignores Russia’s massive casualties, military setbacks and huge economic damage to inflict fresh misery – aided by General Winter – on the people he claims to be saving from Nazis. He refuses to yield in his maximalist demands that Ukraine must hand over all of its unconquered Donbas fortress belt, aware that hard-right populists in France, Germany and Poland might soon win power to shatter any semblance of European unity towards Ukraine.
When Britain joined the US in destroying Iranian drones fired at Israel two years ago, Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky condemned the failure to provide similar protection over European skies for his people. “Shaheds in the skies above Ukraine sound identical to those over the Middle East,” he said correctly. “The impact of ballistic missiles, if they are not intercepted, is the same everywhere. Terror must be defeated completely and everywhere, not more in some places and less in others.” His words are even more relevant today and our hypocrisy looks even more striking when our Armed Forces rush to protect Gulf dictatorships but fail to provide similar support to a wounded democracy valiantly fighting for freedom in Europe.