By Lara Spurr
Up to press the UK government has provided more than £2.3bn of military aid to Ukraine, with £560mn earmarked to the MoD to replenish depleted UK weapons stocks.
Yes folks, as UK citizens are dying in hospital car parks because our A&E departments are overrun, and people freeze in their own homes because they can’t afford to heat them, the chief oligarchs who run this country have been sending taxpayers precious money to further their precious proxy war.
A proxy war whose main purpose is nothing to do with “defending democracy and freedom” as they claim (the regime they’re supporting is pretty nakedly fascist at this point) but rather the tempting prospect of making an inroad into Eurasia in order to plunder her considerable resources. And who will benefit from this?
Governments throughout Europe have been frantically placing orders with the weapons barons to replace all the material they have sent to Ukraine, as well as the regular stock replenishment necessitated by wear and tear. Inflation and supply chain issues have made the situation worse. Here in the UK, Tory chair of the Commons defence committee Tobias Ellwood has stated that all this has created “a really grim picture” with military supplies for our armed forces being left seriously depleted.
Lobbying to increase military spending has become louder, whilst ideas as to how Britain can save money on defence spending have been put forward – these include the decommissioning of HMS Prince of Wales, leaving the Royal Navy with one remaining aircraft carrier, plus scaling down Special Forces operations and RAF flights. However, not all are happy with talk of further inflation-related cuts, with politicians on both sides of the house expressing grave concern about the apparent decrepitude of our armed forces.
And the picture painted by those such as Ellwood is indeed grim – not only is there now a shortage of surface-to-air and anti-tank missiles in our arsenal due to eager donations to Ukrainian Banderites, but much of our equipment is seriously obsolete, the conflict in eastern Europe likely highlighting exactly how unfit for purpose our own forces are.
Lack of personnel is also a worry, with recruitment and retention continuing to cause issues (enlistment fell following partial privatisation of recruitment in 2012, and has only partially recovered since.) A top level US General recently commented that the UK no longer has a tier-one level fighting force in common with the US, Russia, and China. We now barely have a tier-two level force, only just being on par with the forces of Germany and Italy.
What our government has been good at though, as well as depleting our arsenal and wearing down our armed forces to stark unreadiness, is the foul practice of escalation – touting for more war rather than encouraging negotiations to end it, encouraging more death profitable only to the defence industry and other vultures whose pockets are always lined by human misery. Yapping like a terrier, a diminutive hellhound hiding behind the legs of the new masters of the Empire in Washington – it paints not only a grim picture, but a ridiculous one!