Britain has already committed to donating £3bn a year in military aid to Ukraine….reports Asian Lite News
Britain is to lend Ukraine an additional £2.26bn and allow Kyiv to spend the money on weapons to fight off the Russian invasion as part of a wider $50bn (£38.5bn) loan programme expected to be confirmed by G7 members later this week.
The loans will be repaid using interest generated by the $300bn of frozen Russian assets held in the west, with the extra funds promised as the US heads towards a presidential election where support for Ukraine is a divisive issue.
Rachel Reeves said: “The profits being made on those assets aren’t being kept for Russia to use in the future. They’re now being used to fund Ukraine.” The chancellor made the announcement alongside the defence secretary, John Healey.
Britain has already committed to donating £3bn a year in military aid to Ukraine. The UK loan would be additional to that and likely to be spent by Kyiv on badly needed munitions, Healey said, once enabling legislation passed through parliament.
Efforts to hand the entire amount of Russian frozen assets to Ukraine foundered amid opposition from the IMF, concerned it would undermine confidence in the financial system, and fears it could be subject to legal challenges from Moscow.
“What we’re not doing is confiscating these assets to fund this loan,” Reeves said. “We’re using the extraordinary profits on the assets, and that’s how we’re confident that we can do this within all the right legal frameworks.”
The US is expected to contribute $20bn, with other G7 members confirming their share of commitments. Reeves emphasised the UK announcement was timed before this week’s IMF and World Bank annual meetings in Washington DC, a fortnight before the US presidential election. “We hope the other parts of the jigsaw fall into place at the end of this week,” the chancellor said.
Donald Trump, the Republican presidential candidate, has expressed scepticism about continuing future funding for Ukraine, raising questions about Ukraine’s ability to fight the war given the US has so far been Kyiv’s largest donor. Washington has provided $64bn in military aid since Russia launched its full-scale invasion in February 2022.
Some of the $50bn loans may be used to buy weapons made by the US, with diplomats seeing that as a possible alternative if Trump were to halt the flow of donations from US stockpiles. But it would be up to Ukraine to determine what it wanted to use the money for, in discussion with each G7 country providing a loan.
Reeves declined to discuss whether next week’s budget, the first under this Labour government, would give a timetable as to when the UK would increase defence spending to 2.5% of GDP from 2.32% at present. “We stand by that commitment, and we’ll set out the details of that as soon as we can,” she said.
The chancellor is aiming to make £40bn worth of tax rises and spending cuts in the budget. Relations between the Treasury and Ministry of Defence remain cordial, with Healey not one of the ministers who have written to Reeves to complain about the level of cuts being sought by his department.
PM warns Russian threat to global stability
Russian attacks on the Black Sea is delaying vital aid from reaching Palestinians, Keir Starmer has warned.
The prime minister said Vladimir Putin’s actions against Ukrainian port infrastructure are also preventing crucial grain supplies from being delivered to the global south in what he called a threat to global stability.
Starmer made the warning ahead of his visit to Samoa for the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) where he will meet representatives of all 56 independent member states.
The UK has received intelligence showing that Russia is increasingly carrying out strikes on port infrastructure in the Black Sea – including at least four merchant vessels between 5 and 14 October. The strikes are believed to have delayed one ship from leaving Ukraine which carried the vegetable oil needed for the world food programme in Palestine.
The attacks also hit ships loaded with grain destined for Egypt and two vessels carrying corn and other world food programme shipments bound for southern Africa.
“Russia’s indiscriminate strikes on ports in the Black Sea underscore that Putin is willing to gamble on global food security in his attempts to force Ukraine into submission,” the prime minister said.
”In doing so, he is harming millions of vulnerable people across Africa, Asia and the Middle East, to try and gain the upper hand in his barbaric war. In recent weeks, we have seen reporting that the Kremlin has been forced to turn to North Korea to provide troops to fuel its self-destructing war machine, an embarrassing and desperate act, and now they are intensifying attacks on areas of Ukraine that support the global south with much-needed food.”
Starmer’s warning came after he met a group of British Palestinians who have family members trapped in Gaza on Tuesday.
The British Palestinian Families Network presented the prime minister with a list of 10 demands to help improve the situation, including the need for a child evacuation scheme. The scheme would provide life-saving treatment for 15 critically injured children from Gaza by bringing them to the UK to receive specialised care.
“It is hard to talk about this collective trauma, but political leaders must hear our testimonies directly, so they understand the real-life impact of their policies,” one of the family members said.
“This would just be a tiny drop in the ocean, but it could be the start of something more. All we can hope is that they have not just heard what we have said, but have listened. Time will tell.”
The group also called for a Palestinian visa programme and measures by the UK to ensure medical aid enters Gaza despite Israel’s ongoing blockade. The prime minister will remain in Samoa until Saturday. There has been mounting pressure from leaders of Caribbean nations to pay reparations for the impact of the transatlantic slave trade.
Downing Street has said Starmer remains opposed to apologising for the UK’s historical role in slavery and that the issue of reparations is “not on the agenda” at the summit despite calls from some of his own MPs.
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