Chris

Yes, the UK is continuing to support Ukraine with hardware as well as training. It’s pretty obvious special forces were in country training them in insurgency prior to the conflict and had at least something to do with Ukraine’s wildly successful push back against Russia in 2022.

Russia is an imperial state which is fighting to hold what it has and to regain what it feels entitled to. That began with skirmishes in Chechnya and Georgia but Ukraine is the real proof of concept. Were Russia able to reassimilate Ukraine it would regather its strength and then go after the Baltics, then Poland, and somewhere along the way would likely use constitutional shenanigans to absorb Belarus too. The aim is for Russia to reassert the maximum extent of its historic influence, which it enjoyed through the USSR between WW2 and the collapse of the Berlin Wall in 1939.

This is not a war of choice between squabbling siblings with wrong on both sides. Such a view is devoid of any attempt to bother understanding what’s happening, akin to a bored father scolding both children for spoiling his peace because he can’t be bothered putting his newspaper down long enough to understand what’s actually happening.

As Hugh said, if Russia stops, the war ends. If Ukraine stops, Ukraine ends. Even a viable ceasefire on the current line of contact favours Russia in the long term. Russia has never respected any treaty, ever, for any length of time. The assault to take Kyiv would simply be scheduled for some time next decade once Russia has regenerated its forces.

The UK and others must support Ukraine in order to prevent that happening and, selfishly, to stop Russia’s imperial project from creeping closer to their own borders.