Notes

Ukraine conflict: Simple visual guide to the Russian invasion
The Prime Minister called Russia’s attack a “massive invasion”, and accused President Putin of having “attacked a friendly country without any provocation and without any credible excuses”. If President Putin decides to extend his attacks beyond Russia and into a neighbouring Nato state, such as Latvia, Lithuania or Estonia, then the UK would be bound to go to war with Russia. But Ukraine is not a part of Nato, so the Western response to Russia’s invasion will initially focus on sanctions. Many analysts say Beijing in particular is looking on as it formulates its own plans to reunify Taiwan with mainland China. The fear is that if Russia is allowed to invade Ukraine unresisted, that might act as a signal to other leaders that the days of Western powers intervening in other conflicts are over. Nato powers are already promising to build up their own forces in the alliance's eastern flank.


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. Denmark has allocated 91m Danish kroner (over €12m) for the cyber defence of Ukraine within the IT coalition. A 13-year-old girl died today from injuries sustained in the Russian shelling of her village in the Kharkiv oblast earlier this month, said Oleg Synegubov, head of the Kharkiv regional state administration. Downing Street has ruled out any move towards conscription, saying the army service will remain voluntary. EU leaders are expected to meet again on 1 February to suss out the financial package. The Russian president has intensified a crackdown on opposition since the start of his invasion of Ukraine, and this has ramped up further as the elections have approached.

Ukraine crisis: What’s at stake for the UK?
Ukraine had feared ahead of the winter that Russia was stockpiling weapons for large-scale attacks. Ukraine has not seen attacks as heavy as this since the start of Russia's full-scale invasion. On Tuesday night President Volodymyr Zelensky said Russia had launched 500 missiles and drones against Ukraine in just five days. Peter Ricketts, the UK’s former national security adviser, joined us to discuss the Ukraine crisis. One risk is that leaks and arguments about the size of the army, military procurement and GDP percentages distract from a serious reckoning on what a new war in Europe means for the post-Cold War ‘peace dividend’ that has benefited us all. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has profoundly changed the calculus in deciding where to invest and where to cut.

The joint declaration, expected to be signed by all members of the G7, will set out how allies will support Ukraine over the coming years to end the war and deter and respond to any future attack. Germany has said it might need to use coal, the most polluting fossil fuel, for longer than expected, in order to free itself from gas. The near-total global embargo on advanced processors that was leveled on Russia also ensured that any computerized equipment lost could scarcely be replaced. Here, according to former Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) head Professor Michael Clarke and retired Air Vice Marshal Sean Bell, are a few of the lessons the MoD will be taking on board.
The parliament enacted draconian anti-protest laws on January 16, 2014, that limited freedom of speech and assembly, outlawed nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), and established a virtual dictatorship under Yanukovych. Though they were repealed only 12 days later, the measures steeled the protesters. In an effort to preserve his rule, Yanukovych removed Prime Minister Mykola Azarov and offered government posts to opposition leaders Arseniy Yatsenyuk and Vitali Klitschko, but both declined. Russia-Ukraine War, war between Russia and Ukraine that began in February 2014 with the covert invasion of the Ukrainian autonomous republic of Crimea by disguised Russian troops.

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Between February 2022 and March 2023, the UK has committed £4.6 billion in military assistance. The UK supports Ukraine military mostly within the bilateral framework but also through NATO. Moreover, James Cleverly has announced that the UK is ‘very supportive’ of fast-tracking Ukraine’s membership to NATO. The most notable initiative between 2014 and 2022 was Operation Orbital – a mission set up and led by the UK which aimed to train Ukrainian troops up to NATO standards.


"They're always trying to find a better way to break our air defence systems and make their attack more efficient," Oleksandr Musiyenko at Ukraine's Center for Military Legal Research told the BBC. As prime minister Boris Johnson promised to increase defence spending from an existing 2% to 2.5% of GDP; his successor Liz Truss went further by committing to 3%. The Russian invasion displaced Ukrainians who, fleeing the conflict, became refugees in need of accommodation and support. The Home Office’s initial response was criticised for being slow and bureaucratic, as the department’s overriding instinct to prioritise control, and security won out over pressure to get refugees into safe UK accommodation quickly. The price of gold – usually considered a safe haven in the stock market – could see a jump in the coming weeks. In the past year or so it has remained relatively flat, which was unusual when inflation was so high.


After an uneasy peace with Ukraine, Moscow has sent forces into the Baltics, clashing with British troops based there to protect Nato’s eastern flank. Moscow and Kyiv traded fresh accusations over the plane that Russia says Ukraine’s forces shot down near the rivals’ border, killing 65 Ukrainian prisoners of war. Ukraine said on Friday that Russia had returned the bodies of 77 soldiers, the AFP news agency reports, days after the crash of a Russian military transport plane threw doubt on the future of such exchanges. Russian forces launched eight rocket strikes on civilian infrastructure in the Donetsk and the Kherson oblasts, the general staff of the Ukrainian armed forces said in its morning briefing.


Germany has said it might need to use coal, the most polluting fossil fuel, for longer than expected, in order to free itself from gas. With war raging in Ukraine, many fear ministers will be distracted from climate action. The UK gets just 5-6% of its gas imports from Russia, according to analysis of government data by think tank ECIU, so supplies are not likely to be so directly affected. Turkey will get 40 new F-16s and upgrades to 79 of the jets in its existing fleet, the state department said in a news release.

Some in Kyiv are hunkering down in the city's metro stations and air raid shelters, while others are trying to escape. Serious discussion of defence spending, procurement and supply will be a new reality for the government for years to come. On December 16 Putin offered Ukraine $15 billion in loans and reduced gas prices to offset a shortfall in the country’s finances that had been sparked by the near depletion of its hard currency reserves. But this was followed up with missile attacks, using different kinds of weapons in a bid to overwhelm and break through the city's defences. "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."
That means extremely difficult choices for a Treasury gearing up for retrenchment and conscious that protecting military budgets means cuts would fall even more heavily on public services, themselves in desperate need of more investment. One sector that could certainly feel the ripple effects from the crisis is the luxury property market. Since the threat of invasion began to build, some say interest from Russian buyers in high-end British property (generally concentrated in certain pockets of London) has stalled. Mark Pollack, co-founding director of Aston Chase, says people appear to be “sitting on their hands and doing nothing, waiting to see how this plays out”. Oil prices have already been pushed to a seven-year high of $97 a barrel, as investors fear that Russia will tighten its supply on the commodity.

Prof Clarke says the 4,000 NLAW anti-tank weapons provided to Ukraine by the UK are a good example of what can happen. Downing Street has ruled out any move towards conscription, saying the army service will remain voluntary. By the end of July, the EU and the U.S. had increased sanctions on Russia, freezing bank accounts and banning travel by prominent officials. Prior to Russia's invasion, the Foreign Office had seen a decline in its Russia expertise - despite the government having described the country as "the most acute threat to our security" in the Integrated Review.
“While this means less threat of shortages, it’s not going to protect the UK from sky-high prices on the international markets,” she said. But Sarah Coles, of stockbrokers Hargreaves Lansdown, said prices would be forced upwards for British providers, despite little of their supply coming from Russia. In contrast, the UK’s decision to supply Challenger 2 tanks to Ukraine was politically uncontroversial in Britain. 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. More recently, there was a discussion in Parliament on whether the UK should also provide fighter jets, but it has not been decided at this stage.


Schoolchildren rehearsed “duck and cover” drills; householders built nuclear fallout shelters in their garden. Counterintuitively, a war could also mean fewer Ukrainians travelling to the UK to pick vegetables, adding to our worker shortage. In https://euronewstop.co.uk/why-no-un-peacekeepers-in-ukraine.html , Ukrainians made up about 90 percent of foreign workers who arrived in Britain on the seasonal agricultural workers scheme (the post-Brexit system designed to fill gaps in the labour market). If those agencies pull out of Ukraine in the event of war, experts fear it could trigger a worker shortage in Britain.

My Website: https://euronewstop.co.uk/why-no-un-peacekeepers-in-ukraine.html