After a week in which Xi Jinping bestrode global politics by hosting the two most powerful leaders in the world, China’s president looks like a Colossus. Keir Starmer, meanwhile, has revealed himself as a minnow among men.
His capitulation to short-term, local British politics, by quietly easing restrictions on the importation of refined Russian fuel to the UK, shows he has no capacity for strategic thought, or leadership: he has run up a white flag in an act of battlefield cowardice he doesn’t even comprehend.
After hosting Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin, Xi continued his efforts to show China as a force for stability in a world in which international law is ignored by both Russia and the US, by calling for respect for global legal practices.
Starmer’s smalltime decision to allow Russian diesel and jet fuel into the UK, so that Britons can enjoy cheap flights over the summer, is a blow to Ukrainians fighting to protect their democracy. It is also a violation of his agreements with allies to choke off the Kremlin’s money pipe, and a violation of the UK’s written commitments.
It is a boon to the Russian war effort and will mean that the Kremlin has more money to kill Britain’s allies in Ukraine.
Men and women I have known since before the 2022 full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine, who held back Putin’s invading convoys as they converged through Sumy province and roared down the highways from Belarus, now stand a slightly higher chance of being killed because of the British prime minister.
Small teams of Ukrainian volunteers turned the invaders back in March 2022 with British NLAW anti-tank rockets. Many of them formed their own units in the finest tradition of partisans through history, and, with the swashbuckling flair of the early SAS, humiliated Putin, stole his tanks with tractors, enlisted their wives as intelligence agents behind enemy lines, and shattered his plans for conquest.
More than half of those volunteers are now dead. Those that survive are now experts in drone warfare – a way of killing that was developed because the US cut military aid and Europe dithered over whether or not it really wanted Ukraine to win.
They have been buoyed throughout the last four years of war by the thought, the knowledge, that Britannia had their backs. But Starmer’s back-sliding on sanctions against Russia – already revealed in the British reluctance to stop the Kremlin’s shadow-fleet ship carrying oil to fund its war – is a metaphorical gut punch to Ukraine and a psychological win for Putin, delivered by Britain’s prime minister.
It will not be forgotten by men like “Sneaky”, a Ukrainian marine major who led international volunteers in the liberation of Kherson, or “Grumpy”, who knocked out 14 Russian armoured vehicles using a stolen Russian tank in Sumy province, fought in the final days of the Battle for Bakhmut, and had his thigh shattered on a reconnaissance mission by a Russian who got a burst of bullets off before Grumpy killed him at close range.
In Zaporizhzhia province, where Russian troops have been pressing on the local capital for months, drone units like Team Grey drew moral support from places like London. Avi, an engineer and now a drone pilot, had been on the front line non-stop for three years.
In Kyiv, the history of British defiance – the “spirit of the blitz” – has inspired the population to maintain a stiff upper lip amid nightly drone and missile attacks, enabling the city’s world-class clubs and restaurants to remain open and continue operating with defiant joy.
No such resolve has emerged from No 10 Downing Street.
Starmer’s decision is bad news for Ukraine. It is also a staggering failure to fulfil his mission to protect the UK itself.
It means that Russia will have more money to continue to prosecute its hybrid war against the UK and other Western allies, which includes surveillance of our global communications links, undermining our democracies, carrying out political assassinations and physical sabotage, and – in the long term – planning to cripple our critical national infrastructure.
Boris Johnson harnessed his charm and charisma to deliver the strategic and economic disaster that was the UK’s departure from the European Union. But in Ukraine, Johnson is as close to a national hero as a foreigner can be – because he stood up and stepped in to help when Kyiv’s need was most dire.
His rhetorical skills were given full throat when he visited the Ukrainian capital, where his performances of Churchill-lite managed to dodge ridicule and inspired frontline fighters with the idea that they were in the vanguard of Europe’s defence.
Starmer followed up, and capitalised on this low-cost, high-reward policy by signing a 100-year accord with Ukraine last year.
Kyiv will never fall to Russia, and whatever the outcome of the war, what is left of Ukraine will emerge as a military and industrial powerhouse. Britain’s past role is still acknowledged and that may help future relations with Kyiv. But a country that has had six prime ministers in 10 years needs to protect its international reputation.
“British support arrived in our hardest moments: military support, humanitarian help and sanctions pressure. It arrived when others were still hesitating,” said Oleksandr Tolokonnikov, deputy governor of the frontline province of Kherson.
“Our concern is not about British leadership. It is about a specific mechanism which may weaken an instrument that Britain itself built carefully over many years,” he added. “And this issue matters not only for Ukraine. Russia is not only a threat to us. It is a challenge to the security system of the whole free world.”
The allies defeated Hitler in the Second World War when Britain was led by Churchill, who told his country in 1940: “I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat.”
That country is now led by a runt of a man who is no longer prepared to make the case for defending the democracy so many died protecting then, and for which so many are dying today.
