British forces will deploy to Kosovo following increasing tensions in the northern part of the country.
UK forces will deploy to NATO’s peacekeeping mission in Kosovo following a request from NATO. This follows on from the violent attack on Kosovo Police in northern Kosovo on 24th September and increasing tensions in the region.
Following a request from Supreme Allied Commander Europe (SACEUR) and approval by the North Atlantic Council, the UK will deploy around 200 soldiers from 1st Battalion of the Princess of Wales’s Royal Regiment in the coming days to join the 400-strong British contingent already in country as part of an annual exercise.
The British Army unit has been assigned to the NATO Commander of the Kosovo Force following a specific request from the Supreme Allied Commander Europe, “SACEUR”, US General Chris Cavoli.
Admiral Sir Tony Radakin, Chief of the Defence Staff, said:
“The deployment of the 1st Battalion of the Princess of Wales’s Royal Regiment demonstrates the responsiveness of the UK’s Armed Forces. We continue to be a fundamental part of the NATO alliance, sharing our military expertise and strength. The extension of our support to the Kosovo Force (KFOR) underlines our unwavering commitment to NATO and the security of the Western Balkans region.”
Under NATO command, and working alongside other Allied nation forces, UK forces will be available to conduct operations in accordance with KFOR’s mandate.
NATO has been leading a peace-support operation in Kosovo – the Kosovo Force (KFOR) – since June 1999. Troops from the NATO-led Kosovo Force (KFOR) are provided by 28 countries. The UK contributes two intelligence surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) units, staff officers to the mission Headquarters alongside the SRF commitment, held at 14 days’ readiness.
The UK commitment to KFOR was extended in May 2023 when the Minister for Armed Forces James Heappey announced the UK would continue to contribute to the NATO mission until at least 2026.
That’s a pretty typical announcement from the government..greater commitment with less resources..it’s all very well deploying the British army all over the place in penny packets…but if your doing that you need the organisational strength to back it up….the reality is the Balkans it’s heading for another shit show that will need more and more NATO peace keepers… and you can guarantee there is one man Stirring that pot of war and ethnic cleansing in waiting….chaos in the Balkans..Serbia has just about fallen into a criminal mafia state run essentially by crime bosses. Bosnia Herzegovina is falling into disintegration along ethnic lines and is a hairs breath away from the three main ethnic groups heading into conflict, Kosovo’s long running secession from Serbia will at some point come to a head….basically the Western Balkans is a tinder box Putin wants to ignite…
remember that Albania and Croatia are NATO and EU members and you can pretty much guarantee that when Bosnia explodes Serbia will step in to support the Serbian majority and there is no way Croatia is going to step back and abandon the Bosnian Croats to the mercy of Serbia……all in all its a shit show that’s going to suck more and more NATO peacekeepers to stabilise and stop from exploding…
what with strengthening the armies commitments to North eastern European deployments….we are not heading for a BAOR….just a load of nackered infantry battalions constantly sent to different parts of Eastern Europe in a constant string of deployments.
You cannot have a government that simply expects and promises more and more but does not pay the money to fund the commitments..in the end your people just start to walk away….it’s why we have across the board recruitment issues in strategically important workforces.
Agree. Sunak and the too long in power Tories have utterly lost the plot, sleeping at the wheel and heading for a serious crash. The UK is so blindly ignoring the security threats and geopolitical situation that there is no other conclusion to be made then we will be militarily defeated at some point in the next 10 years unless the government wake up and actually perform their number 1 duty. That being the provision of our armed forces and the achievement of our national interests and protection of our allies. Failure to do so should be considered treason and these politicians who make bad decisions, enforce pointless defence and capability cuts should be able to be taken to a brick wall and face a firing squad if as expected we are militarily defeated because of their wilful blindness, indecision and poor choices. Sounds a bit harsh but I am deadly serious, why should our armed forces suffer and die because of crap political masters safe from being held to account.
Once the crime of wilful treason is on the statute books you might start finding that defence is given a higher priority then now.
Mad Vlad and his Serbian puppy dog are stirring up trouble. Problem is any conflict involving Albania or Croatia will potentially trigger article 5.
Mr Bell, to your last point and probably the most import of geopolitical considerations…the last time the Balkans fell apart…the Soviet Union was dissolving and had no interest in anything outside of its boarders and NATO was not directly involved…..now it’s a tinderbox with NATO nations that have direct skin in the game as well as being EU nations, with EU nations all around the conflict zone…and a Russia that is playing geopolitics against NATO…that a bad place…..as it’s got the potential to create a 3-4 sided ethnic fuelled conflict right in the middle of the the EU and NATO..with all the risks, population movement and need for huge numbers of peacekeeping troops to be on the ground for years.
We’ve hung drawn and quartered people who did far less damage to the country than our current government have…
The sad thing is, there’s no domestic political capital in defence. The September 23 IPSOS poll didn’t have defence in the top 10 of voters priorities. That has allowed respective governments to cull our abilities. The public pay lip service to the Armed Forces and it’s people. The fact that those of us who use this platform are, have or serve/served in the UK forces or some defence related industry, gives us an interest. That interest does not translate into a voice that anyone in politics will bother themselves to hear.
Jonathan, your summary of the Balkans sounds all to familiar and correct. I served in four war zones in my time. Bosnia, Sierra Leone, Iraq and Afghanistan. The place and people who truly horrified me were in Bosnia. The guttural hatred by the government factions was staggering. When the thugs didn’t care there were 250 British Soldier near them who were armed to the teeth. They still turned their guns on coaches crammed full of women and children. From my perspective as a fresh face, young and very green 3i/c on attachment, they knew the limits of our mandate and the reluctance of those in higher command to draw a line in the sand. That gave them Carte Blanche to do what they wanted against the other side. The horrors visited on the one side I was near made me question just how whether Europe was civilized at all.
If, it kicks off again, I do hope lessons from that war were learned and we will not see years of paralysis from the UN. A strong mandate of swift and powerful military action against the instigators must follow. Otherwise, another young 3i/c like I was, will see a repeat of what I saw 36 years before.
👌👍
Agree, at a time the UK should be undertaking a crash rearmament programme and preparing for the inevitable conflict that is most certainly coming Sunak and Hunt are talking about HS2, inflation, cost of living and national debt (yes all relevant but the elephant in the room is Putin and president Xi) What price national debt if Ukraine falls and Putin moves onwards to make territorial demands against other NATO or allied countries, which he most certainly will upping the ante and threatening nuclear holocaust if we dare to stand against him?
What price HS2 when a newly emboldened China makes its move against Taiwan, Japan, the Philippines and other neighbouring countries? We are going to look like “Roger the Unready”.
A new crime of treason through incompetence or failure to defend the national interest is long overdue and politicians need to be made fully aware of their duties to national defence, the protection of our national interests and our duties to our allies.
As a rich nation it is entirely up to us if we spend our wealth on benefits, pensions, HS2 or anything else vs a suitable threats based provision for our armed forces.
If a threats based assessment was made the RAF would be back up to 15-20 frontline jet squadrons, with enough MPA (20+ Poseidon) and AWCS (9 Wedgetails+) as well as other enablers to ensure a complete air force at strength.
The RN would be crash building AUKUS asap- meaning the programme starts building at pace in 2024 not the 2030s.
The type 31 programme would be rolled on and on and on with serial batch construction of 5 ship batches and the type 26 programme would be returned to 13 + ships (especially now unit price is <£850 million each)
MRSS/ FSS would be ordered and signed in blood for delivery asap and replacement of the Albion class with a new escort carrier/ ASW carrier and LPHD combined platform would be a given- something like the ITS Trieste design.The new ASW/LPHD platform being constructed in Govan on the same shipyard the QEC were built.
The army would be fitting APS to as many armoured vehicles they can, C3 would be the entire fleet of available vehicles (220 approx), we would be getting a further 50+ apache E’s and the army strength would be back up to 90,000 troops+ MLRS/HIMARS and long range fires units would be being built in large numbers and the provision of ammunition and stores to keep a 90,000+ army in the field of battle indefinitely.
That would be a correct response to a threats based defence provision we are now facing.
Some including some US senior officers, say we were militarily defeated in Iraq (Op Telic) and Afghanistan Op Herrick)
☝
That was suppose to be a thumbs up 😎
It’s ok if you have a question Bulkhead 😂😂
Agreed we just don’t have the Boots no more 👍
True, bring back 3Cmdo Bde… 😉
This deployment is vitally and important, prevention of a conflict being much more useful then having to fight a conflict again in the powder keg of the Balkans. The US secretary of State phoned the Serbian leadership and told him to back down, any military incursion into Kosovo is not going to be tolerated. I cant see NATO repeating its mistakes of the 1990s.
Serbia is being monitored and has a restricted list of options, all requiring democracy and peaceful resolution. The trouble is Serbia is a bi-polar state, they want to join the EU and to palm off investment and as much developmental funding as they can get whilst being more admiring of Putin and his dictatorship.
I cant see Serbia being welcomed into the EU or NATO with its currently demonstrated behaviour towards its neighbours, mobilising thousands of troops and deploying them to the border is never going to go down well.
Still I’m sure if something did boil up our friends and allies in the EU will rush to the aid of Kosovo or Bosnia and crash deploy thousands of troops to face the Serbian incursion.
unfortunately Serbia is now fixed down a road of an authoritarian criminal organisation led state, there is probably no way back from that. It’s actually perfect for Putin as he will bring up the defending against Nazis yet again as the poor Serbian state steps up and defends ethic Serbians against the nazi Croat nationalists…you can see the play now….
Laughter and incredulity
Please explain how one of Serbias provinces is now occupied by Nato troops for 20 years and it isnt like Crimea where changing borders isnt to be tolerated .
Because Serbia provided to the world the only thing it wants to do to the Albanias living in Kosovo is kill them all through genocide…when a government decided it’s going to kill and remove a population it sort of losses the right to rule that population…unless your a believer in let the strong kill the weak. Forgive me but there were no genocides going along in Crimea..no mass graves and mass shootings…? Don’t put in moral equivalence where it does not exist. And as there is a un resolution to ensure an international presence and the safety of Kosovo ( against Serbia predilections for genocide of other ethnic groups that live on land they consider Serbian). The NATO presence is very clearly supporting the security of the UN resolution and UN mission in Kosovo…..
That all was 25 years or more back when Milosevic was in charge.
You are avoiding the point about it being part of Serbia and yet its Nato troops in 25 yr occupation. Like the Cyprus occupation by Turkiye its all OK when Nato does the occupying of another country – without permission
So Nato is going to intervene in Karabah in the Caucasus as the Azeris are driving the Armenians out of their ancestral homes as an ethnic cleansing
yes Kosovo ceded from Serbia on 2008..not because of NATO but because the Serbian and Albanian populations hate each other..NATO was and is there as part of a UN mission..that has included peacekeepers from 43 nations including Armenia, azabizjan, Switzerland, Ireland etc…its a multinational peace keeping force to prevent a genocide that is waiting to happen.
So its a member of UN then ? I think they have had a declaration of independence but but its not valid anymore than Crimeas was in similar circumstances.
EU and Nato say borders cant be unilaterally changed – see Catalonia or Scotland , without the central government allowing “the process”
The UN reolution was 1999, and yet here we are.
I know the background , but why isnt UN intervening with the Armenians in the autonomous Karabah part of Azerbijan
And what about Turkiyes invasion of Cyprus in 1974 . 50 years ago now.
Is not EU ( its a member) , Commonwealth ( its a member) or nato ( Turkiye belongs) doing something about the invasion and occupation . The real reason is dont care when its their own side but beat the war drums when its ‘other side’
did I way Kosovo was a member of the UN…no I did not I said it had ceded…as yet it’s not recognised as an independent state..the UN is there to keep the peace and prevent ethnic violence. As I noted the protections for the Kosovo population are there because of ethic cleansing…you cannot just say…ohhh that was 20 years ago and it was one man’s fault….everything that is needed for ethnic cleansing to occur is still in place in that region.
Related to the Karabakh region resolutions 822 (1993), 853 (1993) and 874 (1993), all relate to UN resolutions focused on Armenia not supporting the breakaway region or send weapons to the Armenian separatist movement in the region…as for peacekeepers on the ground this is provided by a joint Russian and Tukiyes peace keeping force…..due to logistics most peace keeping forces tend to be sourced from the regional area.
as for Cyprus there had been a UN peacekeeping force in place since 1964…( there are even some Russian troops in Cyprus in 2023 as peace keepers) resolution 168, due to inner ethnic violence and risk of ethnic cleansing… the invasion of Cyprus by turkey was actually a reaction to a Greek breach in the agreement of how the island was to be run, basically grease was sponsoring an overthrow of the Cypriot government..remembering at the time Greece was run by a particularly nasty military junta that was on the rocks and needed a war to deflect, Turkey actually had treaty in place with the Cypriot government that it would guarantee it would not merge with any other governments and its invasion Was triggered by Greece making a bid to take over via asymmetric warfare…this then lead to the Turkish population of Cyprus being attacked by Greek separatists.Turkey was actually not the instigator in that war at the time was a UN resolution 353 was for both sided to stand down and leave Cyprus resenting a Cypriot government. After the peace the peacekeepers went back to keeping the two communities from killing each other.
Peace keeping missions only occur after hostilities have been suspended…the UN can only ask for warring sides to come to agreement the job of the peace keeping force is then to monitor the peace and prevent low level violence..they cannot prevent one government from declaring war.
Thanks for sharing your detailed knowledge.
My point was that invasions are never on- according to current standards – but those conflicts are long ago ( Cyprus 70 yrs) and Kosovo 25 years . Greece isnt going to invade Cyprus and Turkey can be made to leave since it did. Serbia isnt the same country now as it was under Milosovic and Kosovo returned to its control and the ethnic differences managed like other countries do.
The Turkish situation especially amazes me as they are in Nato all this time .
Not connected here but the situation with Diego Garcia and the US and UK over the taking of the territory from Mauritius at the time of independence has been ruled illegal by international courts, and was ‘against the international rules’ even at the time in late 60s it happened, but those rules dont apply to UK and Britain when its their vital interest.
Hypocrisy of highest order as even now with court rulings they arent being implemented . US has different rules for China in South China Sea than it does for distant atolls/islets its claimed over the last century
To be honest, the international rules based order is always more about geopolitical power than anything else…there is and always has been a very simple law..those who win set the rules. Nations are not moral, they don’t have ethical bedrocks or feelings, nations are in-fact all entirety amoral, at best a nation follows a path of enlightened self interest ( what is good for you is good for me) and at worst are entirely focused on taking what they want….we need to be really honest with ourselves western nations are wealthy not because we worked harder than the rest of the world….no we had better technology and used our military and geopolitical power to take what we want…let’s be clear the British empire was perfectly content to go to war with china so it could sell drugs to to Chinese population….so I don’t come from a western superior moral standpoint..I come from the humanist standpoint that anyone or any group willing to murder innocent people because of their ethnicity needs someone with a gun to stand between them and the persons they want to cleanse…and often it’s people on both sides would happily shot the innocents on the other side ( ethic hatred burns as brightly as religious hatred…even more so sometimes)….so I don’t really care where their peace keepers come from..I just think sometimes the rest of the world needs to go your not doing that….which in reality is what the UN was set up for..you cannot prevent wars…some nations will always feel a burning need to invade another..but you can try and prevent ethic cleansing.
As for DG the only ethical thing to there was to not expel the population and ask them what they wanted to do…in reality we have a name for when you remove a population from somewhere so you can take their land and it’s not a pleasant name…we should give it back to the islanders and let them decide…offering them a great big pile of money so we can keep renting the land the air base is on.
200 soldiers isn’t a Battalion, it’s a company.
If it had been the Royal Irish RANGERS
There is only one God
There is only, one, THE RANGERS
They would be an Army, with PARA taking notes on how to lead the way.
Alas, we hung up our Caubeens, our knees are as broken as our Officer’s Shillelaghs and the British no longer require true Rangers to roam and quell, stand and fight and show PARA true hard.
I’m sure, t b sure, PARA will be along soon t blow smoke up their own hoops, they knose, we own their arrsess.
So it is.
The article said that 200 soldiers would join the 400 already there. 600 soldiers is a battalion.
Sooner or later we should start saying no and scaling back these kind of commitments. Kosovo is a potential EU candidate state , so politically the EU should form the bulk of any support via its Nato members. Let the underpaying nations chip in, the ones who’s politicians are most vocal on EU unity, and the ones who rushed headlong into gas dependency on putin who is the one agitating here.
We have forces in Estonia, forces training Ukraine troops, pivotinh to the high north theatre etc and gapping tubed artillery and other assets to supply Ukraine.
I think this is one for Brussels to demonstrate their desired boosting of power.
I would sooner we rebuilt proper capability than resourcing multiple small commitments.
To be honest David this is a NATO issue and we are a member of nato…..we have NATO member states that would potentially end up in a shooting war with Serbia ( backed by Russia) the biggest tinder box revolves around Bosnia…a nation made up of Serbians, Croats, or Bosniaks….Bosnia is heading of a civil war in which Serbia would pretty much immediately get involved with..there is no way Croatia is going to not put in peace keeping forces to protect the Croat population…at that point it just takes the Serbian armed forces…( who profoundly hate the Croats) to attack the Croatian forces and you have an article 5 breach that NATO is duty bound to react to…..This is why NATO has peace keepers on the ground and is so concerned with the area destabilising as it’s not an EU issue it’s a NATO issue and unless we want to withdraw from NATO or catastrophically weaken NATO it’s our problem……( hint…NATO being weakened is a direct threat to the security of this nation).Kosovo is just another ethic mix nightmare with the majority being Albanians ( yes another NATO member state) that Serbia is just inching to remove from the map.
Nato airpower would resolve the issue. I wouldn’t argue against logistics support but the fact is we are stretched to thin, and we (barely) make the 2%. The fact is eventually some hard stance is needed to force those nato members that underfund to either spend more, or resouce this missions which are in effect garrison effects.
We struggle to put a meaningful rapid reaction brigade together and have spent billions in ukr, more than the bulk of the EU. ( who again are the ones that courted ukr membership)
NATO air power would not resolve the issue….you don’t resolve a cesspool or ethic hatred by bombing everything that moves…it’s not worked in Syria and it did not work in Libya..air power is a hammer….before NATO used that a lot of people would have died and these nations in the middle of Europe and NATO would become failed states with all that means for security…you cannot AirPower everything that’s hubris. Unfortunately just going well others are not spending 2% and sulking in the corner or building a shiny rapid reaction. Force and buffing it up…will mean sod all if we start to see big chunks of European fall into anarchy and violence…it will impact on the wests standing across the world ( and boy does china and Russia want the west looking weak)..it will potentially cause fractures in NATO..anything bad for NATO, bad for the wests geopolitical strength or bad for European security is bad for the UK.
its closer to 2.5%. Whos your statistician ?
yeah but more by sleight of hand courtesy of Mssr’s Osborne & ‘Dave’.
Boots on the ground have been vastly reduced over the years with no sight of any reversal on that front.
When you remove the creative accounting we probably spend about 1.9%
Ive looked into – such that someone like me can see . Its not too bad.
But Im sure you have some specific details to share ?
Prior to George Osbourne, spending on the independent nuclear deterrent was borne directly by the Treasury, not MoD. I guess he got windy about the upcoming CAPEX on Dreadnought as well as ongoing maintenence on the current boats/missiles and directed the MoD ie Navy to budget for it – which is quite a stretch for them and has clearly impacted on funding for conventionally weaponed naval vessels.
Some Intelligence is now funded by Defence whereas I think it was the Foreign Office before – details are hard to come by!!
Some say that Veterans pensions do not contribute to Defence capability so should not be in the Defence budget – trouble is where else do you put it?
Not at all. You have got it garbled. Its always been a defence budget item, but then it became a Navy only allocation. They were given extra money at the time but costs rise faster
My references were:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-10812825
“The full £20bn cost of renewing the UK’s Trident nuclear deterrent must be paid for by the Ministry of Defence, George Osborne has said.
Traditionally, the Treasury has always found the money for the submarines”.
Wikipedia: “In July 2010, whilst seeking cuts of up to 25 per cent in government spending to tackle the deficit, Osborne insisted the £20 billion cost of building four new Vanguard-class submarines to bear Trident missiles had to be considered as part of the Ministry of Defence‘s core funding, even if that implied a severe reduction in the rest of the Ministry’s budget. Liam Fox, the Secretary of State for Defence, warned that if Trident were to be considered core funding, there would have to be severe restrictions in the way that the UK operated militarily.[9]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chancellorship_of_George_Osborne]
Thanks for that background . However I would disagree with BBCs and many others ( inc some Defence secretaries) muddled background info
This House of Commons research briefing – from experts- says differently
https://researchbriefings.files.parliament.uk/documents/CBP-8166/CBP-8166.pdf
pages 21 , 22, 23
Many thanks. It was clearly an urban myth that HM Treasury directly funded the nuclear deterrent, but one believed by many.
The request came from Supreme Allied Commander Europe (SACEUR) and was approved by the North Atlantic Council (NAC). We are in NATO – you don’t turn down SACEUR and the NAC.
I don’t see your EU point. This is NATO business not the EU’s.
Let’s hope the 400 troops are being sent there with proper equipment in case things go south. Serbia has been moving heavy equipment to the border and there are rumours of them being put on heightened readiness. Serbia won’t be stupid enough to directly take on NATO troops but if the shooting starts, mistakes will happen.
Any actions being undertaken by Serbia will be directed against the Armed Forces of Kosovo,which now seem very unlikely,any NATO Troops being deployed will be there purely as Peacekeepers.
When Serbia is moving heavy hardware into the area, peacekeeping will be impossible without equal capability being available if needed
Peacekeeping is only possible when there is a peace to keep.
Otherwise we are a talking about Peace enforcement operations.
https://www.inclusivesecurity.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/38_peace_support.pdf
Yeah but a key part of peacekeeping is deterence or your not doing anything normally in an african peacekeeping operation soldiers with their personal weapons is enough for that deterance, but here we are talking about the peace potentialy being broken by heavy weapons. First time around warrior’s were deployed to show the UN meant business.
I too am concerned about our guys being light role and probably unprotected by Warriors or even PM vehicles – and also not able to do a ‘Show of Force’ effectively.
Did someone in MoD do a Risk Assessment?
1PWRR are light role infantry!
The last time we were on a UN mission in the Balkans the Infantry were in Warriors. 1PWRR are light role infantry – I presume they are in soft-skinned vehicles? Is that right?
Hi GM, boy I really get the feeling of dejavu again. 90’s wasn’t good. Ethnic cleansing was really rife!!😞