Sending soldiers to Ukraine a risk, says expert as Putin calls West ‘arrogant’

09/05/2024

Sending more soldiers and weapons to Ukraine could be politically dangerous, a military expert has warned as President Vladimir Putin on Thursday accused the “arrogant” West of risking global conflict.

As Moscow celebrated Victory Day with a parade in Red Square, Mr Putin told the crowd that Western elites had forgotten the Soviet Union’s role in defeating the Nazis 79 years ago and were stoking conflict, warning “we will not allow anyone to threaten us”.

Lithuania’s foreign minister this week raised the idea of an ad hoc coalition of western countries sending military training personnel into Ukraine, backed by ground-based air defence, after he met David Cameron in London.

Gabrielius Landsbergis suggested at the meeting that countries including France and the UK could send military training staff to Ukraine, protected by defence provided by the West, to stave off the threat of Russian aerial attacks.

Mr Landsbergis, who has a history of taking a harsh stance against neighbouring Russia, also spoke out in support of Mr Cameron’s comments that Ukrainian forces could use British-made weapons, The Guardian reported.

French Emmuanuel Macron has said he has not ruled out sending ground troops to Ukraine, telling The Economist: “I’m not ruling anything out, because we are facing someone who is not ruling anything out.”

A No 10 spokesperson said in March that the UK has a small number of personnel in Ukraine, helping train Ukrainian troops in areas such as medical assistance.

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Russia insists it will retaliate against increased Western involvement in the war, warning Britain this week that if UK weapons were used to strike Russian territory it may look to hit back at British military installations.

Mr Putin insisted on Thursday that preparations for the practice deployment of tactical nuclear weapons in southern Russia were nothing unusual after Moscow said earlier this week it would hold the drills after what it characterised as threats from France, Britain and the United States.

Dr Matthew Ford, an associate professor at the Swedish Defence University in Stockholm, told i that sending more British personnel to Ukraine could risk creating political divisions within Nato, if foreign military trainers were to be attacked and killed.

“At what point does Nato as a whole get involved, if the French or UK military were to be attacked?” he asked. “It’s one thing for Nato to decide to attack Afghanistan, it is a much more serious thing to retaliate against a nuclear power.”

He said that the upcoming UK general election could influence whether or not the UK decides to send soldiers to Ukraine.

“The Tory government wants to sound tough on the issue, but doesn’t want to take the political risk of actually doing anything,” he told i. “They are likely to talk about the importance of helping Ukraine and European security, but I think it’s likely they may ultimately decide ‘oh, we are not sure’ when it comes to actually putting British troops on the ground ahead of an election.”

“A lot of elections are going on right now all over the world and this is extremely politically risky, both the Conservatives and Labour will be thinking about it closely.”

But he said that such a move would be a great help for Ukraine ahead of an expected summer offensive by Russia.

“Ukraine is under a lot of pressure at the front, and this makes it very hard to find time for training,” he said.“We know they have serious challenges rotating troops into the frontline, and recovering troops in and out.

“They simply aren’t rotating their troops very much. Training armies properly requires a whole branch of the military, it is a very hard thing to do properly”.

Ukraine’s 800,000-strong army is “a lot” of soldiers to train, he added, pointing out that training armies at scale was an issue in both World Wars. However, the professor thinks it’s invaluable that Ukrainian troops are trained in Ukraine.

“The geography of certain regions in Russia is very different from the UK, having these trained in Ukraine itself will allow them to use weapons more freely.

“You can’t simply bring large numbers of Ukrainians to the UK, France, or anywhere else in Europe to get their training.”

Dr Ford points out that as the age of Ukrainian conscripts goes down, following changes to recruitment policy, foreign intervention may be necessary to ensure that Ukrainian troops become as effective as possible.

James Nixey, who heads the Russia-Eurasia programme at UK think tank Chatham House, said Russian claims that the West is worsening relations were laughable. “I hardly think training people is going to significantly make a dreadful relationship even worse.”

Even if sending trainers did lead to a souring of relations, in his mind, this would be an “acceptable price to pay” for helping Ukraine.

Dr. Kristian Gustafson, a reader at the Centre for Intelligence and Security Studies at Brunel University, thinks that a show of on-the-ground support from a large European country like France or the UK could help drum up support from smaller countries, as well as comparable countries like Germany.

“Leadership from these bigger states is really needed to increase support to Ukraine and help them survive the coming year.”

Dr Gustafson believes that even if these interventions fall short of provoking direct military action from Russia, they could provoke more “sabotage and hybrid warfare” in the territory of the EU, such as cyberattacks.

He thinks this “remains an unrealised risk within the UK”.