The UK Defence Secretary, John Healey, has announced a £225 million military support package for Ukraine during a visit to Kyiv, reaffirming the UK’s commitment to support Ukraine’s defence into 2025.
This announcement was made following Healey’s meeting with his Ukrainian counterpart, Rustem Umerov, as part of ongoing efforts to bolster Ukraine’s military capabilities against Russian aggression.
The new support package includes £186 million allocated through the International Fund for Ukraine, aimed at enhancing Ukraine’s naval and air defence systems. Key components include:
- Naval Support: £92 million for small boats, reconnaissance drones, loitering munitions, mine countermeasure drones, and uncrewed surface vessels.
- Air Defence: £68 million for radars, decoy land equipment, and counter-drone electronic warfare systems.
- Critical System Maintenance: £26 million for support and spare parts for previously supplied equipment.
- Counter-Drone Measures: £39 million for more than 1,000 counter-drone electronic warfare systems and protective equipment.
- Ammunition: Explosive charges for over 90,000 155mm artillery rounds, compatible with the AS-90 self-propelled guns previously delivered by the UK.
Healey outlined five priority areas for the UK’s support of Ukraine: increasing Ukraine’s military capability, enhancing training programmes like Operation Interflex, strengthening defence industrial cooperation, deepening collaboration with allies, and applying further pressure on Russia.
“Our support for Ukraine is ironclad, and during my meetings in Kyiv today, I made clear the UK’s support will continue for as long as it takes,” Healey stated.
Operation Interflex, the UK-led military training programme for Ukrainian recruits, has trained more than 51,000 personnel since 2022, supported by 12 allied nations. The programme will be expanded further to build a reserve of trained soldiers for Ukraine’s long-term security.
The UK continues to co-lead international coalitions providing advanced weapons and equipment, including drones and maritime systems. The International Fund for Ukraine, administered by the Ministry of Defence, has received contributions exceeding £1.3 billion from nations including Norway, the Netherlands, Denmark, and others.
Since the formation of the current UK Government, hundreds of thousands of munitions, missiles, drones, and vehicles have been supplied to Ukraine, reflecting the accelerated pace of support.
It is great to see Uk totally behind Ukraine and so much nerded, but when is the same rule going to apply to our forces as well?
Frustrating when hearing of rumours about cutting personnel to save on efficiencies and i get these are rumours, so i hope the review concludes in the spring that our boys and girls get the increase in budgets to get new kits and tech in numbers. Time will tell!
The FSB has had some success in USA with the talking point that home defence is more important than supporting Ukraine and these are alternatives.
The reality is that DoD has been double counting the weapons sustainment budget as Supporting Ukraine because end of life weapons are being sent and big numbers look good. In fact the sustainment budget is spent on American jobs, profits and taxes to build modern weapon inventory. What is sent to Ukraine would otherwise cost DoD to safely dispose, so a net saving. Not alternatives at all.
However the UK hasn’t been double counting so far as I can tell. AS90 does good service in Ukraine and a few Archers as stop gap aren’t even intended to be equivalent.
That’s a lot of heavy lifting for SDR and with only 2.75% GDP in scope is unlikely to deliver..
Time to let the politicians know that you can’t burn a candle from both ends.
Money for Ukraine but when money for the british armed forces wich are being scrapped ?
It’s “British” with a capital “B”, and its “which”, not to mention the sentence structure is utterly mangled.
If you must troll, please put some effort into mastering English first.
Seems the war in Ukraine continues to strain the public purse and our armed forces are being cut, cut, cut at a time when we are supplying huge packages of military support and funding too Ukraine a non aligned country that has never been our allied and to my mind has never done anything for the UK.
I don’t mind supporting Ukraine as a fight for democracy, but the optics and feel of supporting Ukraine whilst actively cutting our own armed forces and reducing the UKs ability to project power, defend itself and commit too and support our allied commitments is frankly wrong.
The government need to urgently put this right during SDSR, either we invest in our armed forces or we might as well just give the lot away to Ukraine as any war we would be virtually useless anyway. if current situation goes on for too much longer and we fail to rearm and prepare the good citizens of the UK will soon be speaking Russian or Chinese to our overlords and we will be militarily defeated.
Ukraine has applied for NATO membership, so a ‘want to be’ ally.
The U.K. gave formal security assurances to Ukraine in the Budapest Memorandum when Ukraine surrendered its nuclear arsenal. Prior to the agreement Ukraine had the third largest nuclear arsenal on the planet. Had they retained it, you can be sure that there wouldn’t be a single Russian soldier on Ukrainian territory. Providing munitions and weapons is the least we can do.
There are several military agreements in-place between the U.K. and Ukraine.
The Ukraine has done a huge favour to the U.K. and NATO in the way it has badly mauled the Russian military.
Best chance of us not to “soon be speaking Russian” is to continue to arm the one country currently fighting the Russians.
Agreed 👍 However apparently Trump has called on NATO nations to increase spending to 5% of GDP (Defence Blog) that must send shivers through free gear and Rachel from complaints!
meanwhile Mr Musk is talking about cutting spending
End
I understand where you are coming from but I cannot stress enough how determined a large and influential section of Russian society feels about getting their old Soviet borders back. They realise that this is their only opportunity. For the very same reasons that you put forward vis a vis the dire state of our own armed forces, we must support Ukraine and Russia must fail in its war of aggression. You cannot be seen to change borders by force or arms. We simply don’t have the capacity to fight any sort of prolonged battle in Europe so we must gear up our industrial capacity and open our armouries wide.
The only vote we have with the CCP dictatorship is not to buy their supposedly cheap products which in reality is an exchange of sovereign capabilities and so a loss of freedom.
A very bad bargain and something not priced into the deal at all, which allows the globalist to trade away our freedom without any accounting of that.
Without our willingness to buy their global mercantile dominance plan will not work so their military expansion will not happen. Our choice is clear..
£225 million is less than a months contribution, when looking at a commitment of “3 billion per year as long as it’s needed”
We are spending far too little in supporting Ukraine. If Ukraine looses then it will cost us much more to fight whatever comes next.
In any case we need to spend much more on our own defence as well, so as to restore conventional deterrence which we failed to maintain for several years prior to the Russian invasion of Ukraine. I think nothing less than 3% for many years will be enough and we may need to spend more on some years.
If honest the SDR will say this.
3.5 % is the figure being circulated in defence circles as the benchmark. Whether that happens is fairly doubtful.
3.5% would help but it wouldn’t make a dent in the the day to day spending. Something like Germany done give MOD 100 billion just to buy kit. Low level kit at that. New PPE,New Rifles,New utility wagons(land cruiser) and investment into a whole force approach in UAS/UAV and countering them. We have lots and lots different systems and every force is dumping money into them just with over all direction apart from it’s a massive cap and we need it 5 years ago.
The SDR is based on the aspiration of 2.75% GDP because it is supposed to cover 2030 to 2040 timelines.
However that’s the civil service, presumably HM Treasury, at work, not anyone with insight into our imminent challenge from RF imperial intent.
Even 3.5% is far short of the Cold War period though it might be realistic. The Peace Dividend delusion has allowed politicians to safeguard their electoral prospects by shifting Defence spending to social provision and even war in Europe hasn’t enabled them to pivot back to Defence.
I support Ukraine, however, Ukraine has to support itself.
I suggest one method would be to put 18+ years through Interflex, so they have some training because although Ukraine doesn’t want to commit the under 25 age group, Russia will make them bite the bullet.
Those youngsters could go through a longer training programme and receive AR style two week refresher camps.