Long before the Russian retaliation of February 2022 against the shelling of the predominantly ethnic Russian Donbas, before the British arming and training of Ukraine forces (including openly Nazi militia) and before the fanatical tub thumping of Boris Johnson, the British public had made their opposition to war in Ukraine very clear:
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Although they were never allowed to know the truth about the 20 year expansion of NATO and the EU to the East, (moving in Ukraine to the heart of Historic Russian land) the British people’s instincts were sound. There is no doubt that they were also well aware of the disastrous state of their country’s armed forces with navy, army and airforce dramatically reduced in size and effectiveness compared to the height of the cold war – or even the Falklands war.
As a letter from Chris Cope in the Daily Telegraph summarised the state of naval forces:
Of our two carriers, HMS Queen Elizabeth is in refit until next month. Four of the six Type-45 destroyers are in refit, as are four of the Navy’s nine Type-23 frigates. Of the eight remaining vessels, three will shortly commence sea trials.
Three of the four Trident ballistic submarines are operational. The Ministry of Defence never discloses the state of the rest of the Navy’s submarine fleet (SSNs), but last November, Admiral Sir Ben Key, the First Sea Lord, told the Defence Committee that he believed that he could operate three of the six SSNs in service. Both the Navy’s amphibious ships (LPDs) are non-operational.
It is shocking that the UK has just 29 warships in service, representing 28 per cent of the number that we had in 1982. However, of those 29, only 14 are fully operational.
The Financial Times noted that the fleet does not have enough ships to deter Russian submarines around our shores and in the Atlantic.
A former director of the MoD Rob Johnson also told the newspaper that the British armed forces are operating at an “absolute minimum”, which allows them only to carry out peacekeeping and humanitarian assistance operations, as well as the evacuation of civilians and counter-sabotage measures. In the event of a large-scale conflict, Britain would quickly run out of ammunition and the country would not be able to conduct successful military operations.
Johnson also noted that Britain’s air defence system is not developed enough to repel long-range missiles and the Air Force needs to double the number of fighter jets.
The UK tank fleet would be destroyed in two weeks in a war with Russia retired Lieutenant Colonel of the Royal Armed Forces Stuart Crawford told The Sun newspaper. London plans to buy just 148 new Challenger 3 tanks, which are believed to be enough for just two weeks of intense fighting with Russia.
According to Crawford, such a modest number of tanks prevents even its Allies from considering Britain a “military power of the highest order.”
“At the height of the Cold War, not so long ago, the British Army’s Royal Armoured Corps had about 900 main battle tanks,” – Crawford said but in 2023 alone, the Russian Ground Forces received more than 1.5 thousand tanks. In 2024, the Russian army will receive more than 36 thousand units of equipment, the Russian Ministry of Defense reported.
Losing Arms and Secret Data
The British Armed Forces lost an entire arsenal of weapons, including machine guns, assault rifles, rocket launchers and thousands of rounds of ammunition.
As The Daily Telegraph reported, citing official department reports, since 2018, 1.4 thousand computers, 100 laptops and about 300 memory cards on which confidential data could be stored have also gone missing – representing a huge potential threat to the security of the British armed forces.
UK Psychologists Teach Ukrainian Soldiers to Hate
There seem to be no limits to the fanatical and destructive support of Ukraine (with catastrophic results for Ukrainians) as the country is used as a battering ram to attack Russia. Vladimir Buchok, a serviceman of the 24th brigade of the AFU, describes his training:
“I was trained in the UK. They taught us how to use weapons and medicine. Psychologists worked on us so that we did not like Russian soldiers and all Russians in general, so that we killed them and treated them harshly when we captured them,” Vladimir said.
Commenting on the moral and psychological state of his brigade, the captured AFU serviceman said:
“When I came to my brigade, our morale was generally low, the commanders forced us to loot, there was no food”.
Vladimir Buchok received all his equipment back in Britain:
“We were given armour plates that could be pierced with a knife, helmets too, training helmets. We also had to buy everything with our own money”.
This is despite British aid for Ukraine in 2024 of more than £3bn!!
UK Special Forces in Ukraine
Elite British special forces were operating on the ground in Ukraine weeks after Russia invaded last year. That is the allegation contained in the book, Poland at War, by Polish journalist Zbigniew Parafianowicz.
The author is Ukraine correspondent for a daily newspaper in Warsaw and had access to political insiders and senior officials. He quotes an unnamed Polish government minister who claims to have run into British commandos in mid-March 2022 as he was travelling between Kyiv and the city of Zhytomyr. The minister said:
“It was a time when the Russians were still standing in Bucha, and the route was a grey zone. It was possible to run into Russians. We passed the last checkpoint. The Ukrainians told us that we continue at our own risk. Well, and who did we meet next? Ukrainian soldiers and… British special forces. Uniformed. With weapons. They moved with the Ukrainians in trucks and off-road vehicles with artillery radars. They were tracking targets. They were learning about this war. Such radar tracks where mortar or rocket shells fall and are fired.”
A retired Spanish Army Colonel Pedro Baños has said on his youtube channel that 18 members of the British Special Air Service as well as French army soldiers were killed in a Russian strike on Odessa, although neither the British government nor the press have reported British soldiers killed in Ukraine since they are officially not there!
According to him, another 25 members of the British Special Air Service were injured.
“And they tell me that the French soldiers died… these are not mercenaries who are French, no, these are soldiers of the French army,” he added.
The British Political Class Risks Russian Attack
And yet, as we see from the new Labour Prime Minister Starmer the British political class is second to none in its hysterical and uncritical promotion of Kiev’s war, welcoming members of the Nazi Azov battalion to the Houses of Parliament and providing long range Storm Shadow missiles and almost certainly British advisers/operators targeting Russian forces.
Indeed the then conservative MP Andrew Bridgen met the Russian ambassador who said the Russians knew of the UK operators of Storm Shadows in Ukraine. See this.
In May this year the UK’s Ambassador in Moscow “was warned that the response to Ukrainian strikes on Russia using British weapons could be on any British military facilities and equipment on the territory of Ukraine or beyond” – the Official Russian Statement
Russian Presidential special envoy Sergei Ivanov has said that Britain is the most hostile state for Russia:
“Great Britain has been doing the same thing for 300-400 years – trying to limit Russia: its influence, economic power. Do everything so that Russia sits on the outskirts of Europe. It doesn’t matter whether this policy concerns the Russian Empire, the Soviet Union, the Russian Federation – it’s all the same” Ivanov said.[1]
It is, to put it mildly, foolish of British politicians to “shout loudly and carry a small stick”! Especially since there has been no parliamentary approval of any war against Russia. We live in dangerous times.
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[1] See Freenations post http://freenations.net/ukraine-russia-and-the-third-crusade-by-ken-leslie/
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