The U.K. has been pushing for months to have U.S. and French long-range missiles turned loose into Russia’s internationally recognized borders. They succeeded this week in draining Kiev of its limited supply of ATACMS and Storm Shadows, wreaking little or no military benefit, and having to witness Russia use the occasion to send their newly-developed Oreshnik supersonic missile, wreaking significant damage to Ukraine’s major Soviet-era military production complex. But the U.K. came out firing over the last 48 hours, with the Prime Minister, the Defense Minister and the Foreign Ministry all registering their horror.
The Prime Minister’s official spokesman said: “My understanding is that it is the first time that Russia has used a ballistic missile in Ukraine with a range of several thousand kilometers.” Defense Secretary John Healey said it was “yet another example of Putin’s recklessness.... Since the illegal invasion of Ukraine began, Russia has consistently and irresponsibly escalated the conflict while Ukraine continues to fight in self-defense for a democratic future.” But Healey assured they weren’t caught off-guard, as they knew all along that Russia had been “preparing for months” to fire a new ballistic missile.
Both offices refused to admit publicly that British Storm Shadows were now being fired into Russia, nor that they were having no military effect. Healey told the House of Commons that, to comment “risks both operational security and in the end the only one that benefits from such a public debate is President Putin.”
Then the British Foreign Secretary David Lammy joined with French Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot in a joint statement that announced: “By launching his illegal and unprovoked full-scale war of aggression in Ukraine 1,000 days ago this week, not only did Vladimir Putin accelerate the largest war on the European continent since the Second World War, he also sought to rewrite the international order. The annihilation of the global architecture that has been the cornerstone of international peace and security for generations. All to justify his illegal and intolerable aggression against a sovereign European country. The U.K. and France will not let him do so. Together with our allies, we will do everything that is necessary to put Ukraine in the best position to achieve a just and lasting peace.”
It wasn’t a happy week for the geopoliticians; but perhaps the silver lining is that they did not invoke the “rules-based order” cliché and they actually implied that a “global architecture” for “peace and security” is something worth preserving.
