Tag: Ukraine

Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky made an unexpected trip to Britain last week on a whistle-stop tour of European capitals, pleading for more powerful and longer-range weapons to use in his war against Russia.  What was hard to ignore once again was the extent to which the UK is playing an outsize role in Ukraine. Last […]

A neo-Nazi accused of murdering immigrants has filmed himself in possession of five anti-tank rockets that Britain supplied to Ukraine, an investigation by Declassified UK has found. Sergei Korotkikh can be seen with UK-made missile launchers in three videos posted to his Telegram channel. Campaign Against Arms Trade said the discovery is “very troubling”. It […]

A Belarusian criminal who was reported dead last month in Ukraine claimed to have received training from Britain’s Special Air Service. He was also filmed in possession of UK-supplied rocket launchers, Declassified has found. The man, Daniil Lyashuk, came from a far-right hooligan background until he converted to Islam and expressed support for jihadist groups […]

More than 300 Italian veterans who developed cancer after being exposed to depleted uranium ammunition have won court cases against Italy’s military. Some of the cases were brought by their bereaved relatives. The judgments have mounted in recent years, with Italian courts repeatedly finding a link between cancer and service in the Balkans where such […]

British spy planes have flown more than a dozen surveillance missions over the Black Sea in support of Ukraine’s war effort since the autumn. At least three of the sorties triggered a Russian reaction that saw Kremlin jets come very close to the British aircraft, according to leaked US intelligence files. UK defence secretary Ben […]

Rishi Sunak has secretly deployed dozens of special operations forces (SOF) in Ukraine without telling parliament, leaked US intelligence files appear to show. Britain had 50 SOF personnel in the war zone last month according to a slide marked “secret” and “not releasable to foreign nationals”. The UK contingent was the largest of any NATO […]

The UK government has poured over £25m into private “counter-disinformation” organisations since January 2018 and four of these are directed by people linked to the British or US foreign policy establishment. Yet while publishing information deriving from these groups, much of it on the Ukraine war, media outlets are failing to inform their readers of […]

Details of the worst case scenario for an accident involving containers full of depleted uranium shells have been pulled from the National Archives by government censors. The risk assessment’s removal from public view will add to concerns about the safety of Britain sending such a controversial weapon to Ukraine. Depleted uranium (DU) is a chemically […]

The controversy over Britain sending depleted uranium tank shells to Ukraine has deepened today after a minister admitted Russia might not have fired the same ammunition. Armed forces minister James Heappey told parliament: “The Ministry of Defence is unaware of any credible open-source reports of Russia using depleted uranium in Ukraine.” He made the statement […]

“A significant proportion of our lethal aid [for Ukraine] is procured overseas and for both operational and commercial reasons, the detail of these contracts will not be published,” the Ministry of Defence (MoD) has told parliament. The announcement raises suspicion that Britain is sending more controversial weaponry to Ukraine that it does not want made […]

The Ministry of Defence claimed last week that research by the Royal Society – Britain’s premier scientific group – supported its controversial decision to send depleted uranium tank shells to Ukraine. An MoD official briefed the media: “Independent research by scientists from groups such as the Royal Society has assessed that any impact to personal […]

Ukrainian soldiers have been filmed alongside depleted uranium ammunition that Britain is supplying to their country for the fight against Russia. The footage is contained in a documentary the UK Ministry of Defence (MoD) released yesterday as Ukrainian tank crews completed their training. Britain is gifting 14 Challenger 2 tanks to Ukraine together with depleted […]

The UK will send “armour piercing rounds which contain depleted uranium” to Ukraine, for use with the tank squadron donated by the British army. Defence minister Baroness Goldie made the admission yesterday in response to a written parliamentary question from crossbench peer Lord Hylton. Goldie said: “Such rounds are highly effective in defeating modern tanks […]

On February 24th, the head of Britain’s foreign intelligence service MI6 tweeted: “One year ago today, Russia illegally invaded Ukraine. But the Kremlin fatally underestimated both the courage and determination of the Ukrainian people, and the unity of their allies in the face of Russian aggression. MI6 stands proudly with Ukraine”. This is compelling rhetoric. […]

Vladimir Putin’s threat to use nuclear weapons if losing the war in Ukraine parallels NATO’s policy of “flexible response” that dates back to 1968, which similarly included a willingness to use nuclear weapons if losing a conventional war. That policy is not widely understood, yet was and remains a part of US and NATO nuclear […]

The British military has used or threatened to use military force much more in the postwar world than is conventionally remembered or believed. Declassified has documented 83 interventions by the UK armed forces since 1945, in 47 different countries. The most striking of the British uses of force have been the overt invasions or armed […]

When British intelligence warned that Vladimir Putin was about to attack Ukraine earlier this year, the spooks’ foresight won many plaudits. Yet their prediction mirrored a scenario Whitehall had long known might unfold. In May 1992, just six months after the Soviet Union broke up, Britain’s then Prime Minister John Major was being briefed by […]

The Ukraine conflict is also a British one, given the extensive UK role in the war, with Whitehall supporting Kyiv to repel Russia’s brutal invasion in numerous ways outlined in this Explainer. However, UK governments do not go to war for moral or humanitarian purposes; only for strategic gain. In Ukraine, Whitehall’s main goal is […]

To consider Scotland’s possible interest in Nato membership in light of the current crisis in Ukraine, we should look at some significant milestones in post-cold war history.  When the cold war was over, Soviet and Russian leaders from Mikhail Gorbachev to Vladimir Putin proposed a new Euro-Atlantic security alliance —“from Dublin to Vladivostok”.  But then […]

Since Russia invaded Ukraine, foreign secretary Liz Truss has given at least three speeches saying the UK must enable Taiwan to “defend itself” against possible Chinese aggression. Clearly, China and the island of 24 million Taiwanese lying 100 miles off its shore, is very much on the minds of British officials as they aid Ukraine’s […]

Last week Russia celebrated Victory Day, marking the end of the Great Patriotic War, its name for World War Two. Putin’s address made clear that, for him, Ukraine was a conflict between NATO and Russia which would continue until it was won. At the same time as the victory parade in Moscow, Britain’s defence secretary […]

For decades many in the West may look back in horrified wonder at the killings of men, women and children, the war crimes and the attacks on hospitals and schools in Ukraine. Was it avoidable? It should have been. Declassified has highlighted Vladimir Putin’s long standing threats over Ukraine and Russia’s special links to the […]

Maz Saleem’s 82-year-old father Mohammed was fatally stabbed by Pavlo Lapshyn in 2013. Lapshyn, a white supremacist from Ukraine, went on to plant bombs outside three mosques in the Midlands before being arrested.  In a police interview, he said his motive was to “increase racial conflict”. The year after Lapshyn’s attack, fellow neo-Nazis in Ukraine […]

A Ukrainian neo-Nazi group in the besieged city of Kharkiv is said to have received anti-tank missiles made in Belfast. Images of the controversial Azov regiment with the Next Generation Light Anti-tank Weapon (NLAW) were tweeted on Tuesday by Nexta TV, a Belarusian opposition media outlet.  “The Azov regiment was the first to learn about […]