Britain’s most senior army officer has warned that Ukraine has been given false hope by its Western allies and cannot beat Russia unless NATO forces join the fight.
Field Marshal Lord Richards told the Independent that Ukraine cannot win its war with Russia and should negotiate peace terms with the Kremlin.
He said Kiev would not be able to drive Putin’s soldiers out of Ukraine without the help of NATO forces…who won’t get involved on the ground.
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The Independent reports: Lord Richards, who was promoted to the UK military’s most senior “five-star” rank earlier this year and led Nato forces during their troop surge in Afghanistan, said Ukraine’s allies have failed Kyiv.
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“What we have done in the case of Ukraine is encourage Ukraine to fight, but not given them the means to win,” the former chief of the defence staff told The Independent’s podcast World of Trouble.
Reflecting on Ukraine’s chances of success against Russia, he said: “My view is that they would not win.”
“Could not win, even with the right resources?” he was asked.
“No,” he replied.
Pressed further by The Independent, he was asked: “ Even with the right resources?”
“No, they haven’t got the manpower,” the former commando said.
The field marshal’s intervention came after Volodymyr Zelensky flew to Washington DC to meet Donald Trump to try to persuade him to give Ukraine Tomahawk cruise missiles.
The war with Russia has now ground on for more than three years, with incremental gains on each side as the conflict is increasingly played out via drone warfare.
But Zelensky’s plans to pressure Trump appear to have been thwarted by Vladimir Putin, who spoke to the US president hours before his White House meeting with the Ukrainian leader.
At a packed press conference, Trump appeared reluctant to give up American weapons, while retaining a cordial tone with Zelensky – admittedly a far cry from where things were in February. The US president stressed his own country’s needs to maintain stockpiles
Zelensky said very little, except to politely suggest Ukraine could offer up its drone technology in an exchange agreement. Trump seemed open to the idea.
Coming away from the summit, Zelensky said Trump had not said “no” to the idea of Tomahawks – but, for today, he did not say “yes”, either.
In his first long-form podcast interview, Lord Richards, the only British officer to have commanded massed US troops at war since 1945, said the outlook for Ukraine was not good.
“Unless we were to go in with them – which we won’t do because Ukraine is not an existential issue for us. It clearly is for the Russians, by the way,” he said on World of Trouble.
“We’ve decided because it’s not an existential issue, we will not go to war. We are, you can argue – and I absolutely accept it – in some sort of hybrid war [with Russia]. But that’s not the same as a shooting war in which our soldiers are dying in large numbers.
“Despite our attraction for all they’ve achieved and our genuine affections for so many Ukrainians, I’m just still in this school that says this is not in our vital national interests.
