Grant Shapps, the U.K.’s Secretary of State for Defense, is hatching big plans to escalate the U.K.’s direct involvement in Ukraine. Shapps told the Telegraph that he had held talks with Army leaders about moving “more training and production” of military equipment into Ukraine. He also called on more British defense firms to set up factories in Ukraine. Shapps also revealed that he has talked to Volodymyr Zelenskyy, the Ukrainian President, about how Britain’s Royal Navy could play a role in defending commercial vessels from Russian attacks in the Black Sea. The Telegraph writes that both moves would mark a significant escalation in the U.K.’s involvement in defending Ukraine.
Until now, the British training of Ukrainian troops has been carried out in Britain, mainly at the Salisbury Plain army base. However, following a briefing with Gen. Sir Patrick Sanders, the Chief of the (Army) General Staff, and other senior personnel at Salisbury Plain, Shapps said: “I was talking today about eventually getting the training brought closer and actually into Ukraine as well” [emphasis added].
Shapps added: “Particularly in the west of the country, I think the opportunity now is to bring more things ‘in country,’ and not just training but also we’re seeing BAE, for example, move into manufacturing in country, for example. I’m keen to see other British companies do their bit as well by doing the same thing. So I think there will be a move to get more training and production in the country.”
Separately, after his visit to Kiev on Sept. 27 during which he promised that the U.K. would stand “shoulder to shoulder” with Ukraine, Shapps suggested that Britain was preparing to play a more active role helping the country to defend cargo ships going to and from Ukrainian ports on the Black Sea. “It’s important that we don’t allow a situation to establish by default that somehow international shipping isn’t allowed in that water,” he said. “So I think there’s a lot of places where Britain can help advise. [I] did discuss it with President Zelenskyy and many others this week.”
The Telegraph notes that Shapps’s remarks appear to mark a shift in the government’s approach to publicly discussing stepping up military involvement in Ukraine—a move that was mirrored by France yesterday when the French military revealed that its aircraft were carrying out surveillance over the Black Sea.
The Independent reports that Prime Minister Rishi Sunak walked back the comments by Shapps. “And what the Defense Secretary was saying was that it might well be possible one day in the future for us to do some of that training in Ukraine,” he said.
“But that’s something for the long term, not the here and now, there are no British soldiers that will be sent to fight in the current conflict. That’s not what’s happening. What we are doing is training Ukrainians. We’re doing that here in the U.K.”
