For years, since the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, the belief was that Western armed forces would only ever have to take part in what was known as 'expeditionary' wars. These are conflicts involving a strong military force going into a situation in which it has superiority, so it can win easily - for example the Gulf and Iraq wars and conflicts in Sierra Leone and Kosovo. Forces are on standby in eastern Europe, and Nato is working with Ukraine to modernise its forces and protect it against cyber attacks. Here’s how the war will affect the UK, from potential military action to sanctions and gas prices. It's promising to deploy British forces to eastern European members of the Nato military alliance if Russian troops cross Ukraine's borders. In 2022, the UK committed approximately £1.9 billion in economic and humanitarian support, compared to £4.6 billion in military aid. Out of the £1.9 billion, £220 million was spent on humanitarian assistance to Ukraine, making the UK a leading bilateral humanitarian donor. The money is mostly spent on the provision of life-saving supplies, such as medical and food aid, as well as power generators, warm winter clothing and insulating shelters to help with harsh winter conditions. Other elements include budget support for public sector salaries and government services and support for the Ukrainian economy including the energy sector. Ukrainian banks and government websites were hit with a spate of cyber attacks last week prior to the deployment of Russian troops to Luhansk and Donetsk. Ukraine’s minister of digital transformation said the attacks have continued since the full invasion. Will my gas and electricity bills rise? Members of the self-declared Crimean militia, backed by 25,000 troops and sailors attached to the Russian Black Sea Fleet in Sevastopol, took over government buildings and military installations, forcing the surprised Ukrainian units to surrender. The covert invasion and illegal annexation of Crimea was given a sheen of legitimacy by a widely criticized referendum on March 16, during which it was reported that more than 95 percent of voters supported joining the Russian Federation. On February 18 more than 20 people were killed in clashes with police, but that was merely a hint of what was to come. Government snipers fired on protesters from the roofs of buildings, killing at least 80 and wounding hundreds. On https://euronewstop.co.uk/why-doesnt-russia-want-ukraine-in-nato.html of EU foreign ministers arrived in Kyiv to broker a deal between Yanukovych and parliamentary opposition leaders. The parties agreed to form a government of “national unity” within 10 days, implement constitutional reforms to reduce the powers of the presidency—reinstating the constitution of 2004—and hold new presidential elections by December 31. The UK has consistently supported Ukraine with military means since before the 2022 invasion. Defence and security cooperation through bilateral agreements can be dated back to 1993, and the current relationship was reinforced by signing the multi-layered Political, Free Trade and Strategic Partnership Agreement in November 2020. It is also anticipated that continuing sanctions over an extended period may have an increasing effectiveness. After the first wave of sanctions, the Russian economy received some indirect benefits insofar as there were higher revenues from a rise in the price of energy, expansion of local tourism, rise in domestic production and de-dollarisation process. However, the longer sanctions are in place, the bigger the deficit in the Russian federal budget, and these initial positive gains will likely not be able to compensate in the long term. However, as the timelines and the graph on designations illustrate, there is no clear leader between the EU and the UK in the sanctions implementation. 45 25 JanuaryThe Global Story. Audio, 24 minutes, published at 09:45 25 JanuaryThe Global Story This is aligned with Capital Economics’ forecast that rising European natural gas prices will add two percentage points to headline inflation. The firm had expected British inflation to hit 8pc, so this would bring the peak up to 10pc. A rise to 10pc would be 2.75 percentage points above the Bank of England’s current forecast peak, and would be five times its 2pc target. The military support provided by the UK and the EU has been broadly similar in scope, but there are some points of difference over the pace of delivery. Between February 2022 and May 2023, the EU committed around €13 billion on military equipment and training including around €5.6 billion under the European Peace Facility (an off-budget EU instrument), and the rest by the member states directly. The EU Military Assistance Mission in support of Ukraine (EUMAM Ukraine) is the main framework for training and provision of lethal and non-lethal aid to the Ukrainian Armed Forces. Research suggests that, on one hand, after a year of extensive sanctions Russia has fallen into recession, but on the other hand economic instability or a full economic collapse are unlikely. Labour has avoided making any firm spending commitments, but has criticised cuts to the size of the army and promised to launch a defence review if elected. Many analysts fear war in Ukraine could potentially spill over into other European countries. Russia might use the crisis to launch cyber and other hybrid attacks on Nato countries. It could even send troops to the three Baltic countries - Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania. After 2,000 anti-tank weapons were delivered last week and 30 British troops arrived to teach Ukrainian forces how to use them, the phrase God Save the Queen began trending on Twitter in Ukraine. UK and EU responses to the war in Ukraine More broadly the case for increased spending on defence will be need to made against a backdrop of intensive competition for other priorities for public expenditure, notably health and mitigating the cost of living crisis. Before the war, it was expected that one of the first lines of attack from Russia in any conflict would be a major cyber assault, both on Russia's opposing combatant, and potentially on its allies. So far, that has yet to happen, with relatively few reported cyber attacks linked to Russia in the last few months. This domestic UK legislation negotiated after Brexit aimed to ensure that Britain would continue with the regime originally implemented within the EU to deter and counteract Russian aggression in Ukraine. It was enforced in January 2020, and by the end of 2022, twenty amendments were added. Until Brexit, on 31 January 2020, the UK coordinated with its fellow member states to reach a political agreement by the European Council to apply most sanctions. The Sanctions and Anti-Money Laundering Act 2018 was passed to provide autonomous powers to the UK government after Brexit and was enforced fully only in December 2020. Air Vice Marshal Bell says the other reason the attack on the Moskva was successful was because it had been manoeuvring in a way that left it vulnerable to attack. Civilians are banned from driving there, so the Ukrainian drone pilots hit anything with wheels. He eventually spots an antenna next to a window in the stairwell, and flies straight into it. “Covid showed our ugly side, with people getting upset when all they were being asked to do was sit on the sofa at home,” said the former TA soldier. We saw a preview of this strategy in 2007, when hackers shut down websites for major Estonian banks, newspapers and government departments, shortly after Estonia removed a statue of a Soviet soldier from its capital. Russia and Ukraine are huge producers of products including grains and vegetable oil. Collectively, they globally supply 29pc of wheat, 19pc of corn and 80pc of sunflower oil. GCHQ’s National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) urged UK businesses and organisations to “bolster their online defences”, warning that there has been a “historical pattern of cyber attacks on Ukraine with international consequences”. The Times’ policy editor Oliver Wright said that Britons should be ready for “significant rises in petrol and gas prices” after “international oil prices surged by nearly $6 per barrel to more than $100, levels not seen since 2014 when Russia annexed Crimea”. While climate change is often deemed a threat multiplier, it is clear from the last week that fossil fuels are a threat multiplier too, she said. We live in an unstable world. If rich counties fail to support vulnerable countries in tackling climate impacts and in their clean energy transition, it will only fuel a spiral of instability. The vanguard of European states seeking to act at greater pace and scale in weapons deliveries to Ukraine has encompassed some EU and non-EU states, as illustrated in the country signatories of the Tallin Pledge. A Russian team shot and killed a brother and sister from the Khotin community of the Sumy oblast this morning, the regional military administration said. The provision of equipment was coordinated specifically with the NATO-Ukraine Commission and through initiatives such as the US/Canada/UK/Ukraine Joint Commission for Defence Reform and Security Cooperation established in July 2014. The Stoxx Europe 600, which tracks the performance of the largest businesses in the region, has already slipped four per cent this month. A rise to 10pc would be 2.75 percentage points above the Bank of England’s current forecast peak, and would be five times its 2pc target. As Ukraine makes strategic progress in their counteroffensive, and the degradation of Russian forces begins to infect Putin’s front line, we are stepping up our formal arrangements to protect Ukraine for the long term. Signatories will set out the detail of their long-term commitments to Ukraine under the framework announced today in due course. In the past six months, the UK has also expanded its military training programme for Ukrainian recruits. This programme has trained more than 19,000 soldiers to date and training for Ukrainian pilots in the UK will begin this summer. A little earlier, we told you about a report in the Financial Times that the EU was proposing to sabotage Hungary's economy if Budapest blocks further aid for Ukraine this week. A new £2.5bn military aid package from the UK has been welcomed here, with £200m of that earmarked specifically for drones. But President Volodymyr Zelensky has also pledged to make a million of them within the borders of Ukraine. The conflict in Ukraine offers a glimpse of how Britain might prepare for self-defence.
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