Digest · Policy News
Britain will provide £17m ($23m) to fund critical repairs to the Chornobyl power plant hit by a Russian drone attack , as Andy Burnham seeks to bolster support for Ukraine amid doubts about long-term US commitment. The UK will help restore its protective shelter and ventilation, which were damaged by an attack last year , amid concerns that corrosion could create longer-term environmental and safety risks, the chancellor and foreign secretary announced on Thursday. The pledge comes after Burnham hosted Volodymyr Zelenskyy in Downing Street, where he told the Ukrainian president the UK was “behind you and that will not change”.
The meeting came during a period of strained relations between Kyiv and Washington after it emerged that Ukraine’s military has had its access to Elon Musk’s Starlink technology throttled in key areas, in effect rendering most of the drones used to strike behind the frontlines inoperable and reducing its air defences. Russia is already at war with Nato, a former top commander of the military alliance has said. Retired four-star general Curtis Scaparrotti, who served as Nato’s supreme allied commander Europe from 2016 to 2019, warned there was a long-term plan behind the Kremlin’s “spurious activities” against member countries and stressed the need to protect critical facilities.
“If you looked at it from their spectrum, we’re at war with Russia today, within the alliance, because they’re taking actions that are intended to undermine individual countries’ capability to support warfare, undermine their civilians’ confidence in their own government or within Nato, and to break Nato,” he said in Washington. The US proposed European countries unfreeze some Russian sovereign assets and transfer them to a vehicle overseen by Washington in an attempt to revive peace talks, the Financial Times reported on Wednesday. European delegates reportedly rebuffed the plan from US special envoy Steve Witkoff and Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner.
Questions over the future of support in Europe for Ukraine were highlighted on Wednesday by surging far-right parties . France’s Marine Le Pen, who on current polling is predicted to win next year’s presidential vote, said Paris cannot keep financing Ukraine due to the “perilous” state of the euro zone’s second-biggest economy. Germany’s far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) and the small leftist BSW party joined forces on Wednesday to pass a symbolic motion in the state parliament of Saxony-Anhalt calling for an end to Berlin’s military support for Ukraine.
The motion has no practical effect, because state parliaments have no role in foreign policy. Shares in European satellite operator Eutelsat have soared following news of Ukraine’s difficulties with Starlink technology , fuelled by investor bets that European providers could benefit from growing strains between Washington and Kyiv. But experts say Europe does not have a ready-made alternative that Ukrainian soldiers could attach to their drones.
Christian Freiherr von der Ropp, an independent satellite consultant, said Eutelsat’s OneWeb network was not well suited to wartime use and would require the replacement of thousands of Starlink terminals. European defence commissioner Andrius Kubilius said at a conference in Brussels on Wednesday that the continent was quite dependent on American space capabilities. “The answer to that situation is to develop our own capabilities,” he said.
Source: The Guardian
