The Foreign Secretary is making the rightful case that Kyiv can still win the war if it is given what it needs

TELEGRAPH VIEW9 April 2024 •

Lord Cameron’s mission to America to unblock support for Ukraine has come at a critical time in the war with Russia. Volodymyr Zelensky said on Sunday that his country would lose if US aid is withheld and air cover is not improved.

Approval for a £49 billion package for Kyiv proposed by President Biden is being held up on Capitol Hill amid inter-party wrangling and has not yet been voted upon. Republicans in the House of Representatives say they want additional funding for border security agreed first before giving the go ahead to the Ukraine funding.

The Foreign Secretary’s first stop was at Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida, for talks with the past and possibly next president. He has been critical of the amount America is handing over to Ukraine and Nato in general, accusing the Europeans of not spending anywhere near enough on their own security.

Mr Trump’s agreement to the package could well unblock the logjam but so far it has not been forthcoming. Lord Cameron was unwilling to give details of what he said was a private meeting. He later held talks with US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who urged Congress to vote on the package as a matter of urgency. He pointed out that most of the money would actually be spent on arms production in America, providing thousands of jobs.

Lord Cameron responded to criticism that he was interfering in American decision-making by insisting he was not there to lecture anyone but to make the argument that it was in America’s interests to see Russia defeated.

He said the Ukrainians can still win the war if they are given what they need, including air defences, more ammunition and money. Key to this is what to do with the $300 billion of Russian assets frozen when the invasion happened. 

Their confiscation is now actively being discussed ahead of a Nato summit in Japan next month and an agreement to do so would render the release of more US funds much less critical. This would pay for the equipment Ukraine needs.

Under international law such a move needs a vote in the UN Security Council, a judgment by the International Court of Justice or a post-war settlement. None of these will happen in the next few months, if ever. But why should taxpayers in America or Europe pay more to counter Russia’s aggression or repair the damage they have caused when so much of their own money is available?

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LETTERS TO THE EDITOR 10 April 2024 • 

Letters: Europe can’t rely on American power alone to resist Russian aggression

SIR – I can think of nothing more likely to embolden members of the US Congress to deny further desperately needed funding for Ukraine than Lord Cameron publicly urging them to provide it. Is he incapable of the quiet diplomacy for which this country was once renowned, or is virtue-signalling now more important than maximising the likelihood of an effective outcome?
David Argent
Crondall, Hampshire

SIR – The exhortation to back Ukraine “to show borders matter” is quite right. But that it comes from Lord Cameron, the Foreign Secretary, takes the breath away.

Under the 1994 Budapest Memorandum, the UK, United States and Russia were the guarantors of Ukrainian sovereignty. When Russia blatantly violated that sovereignty by annexing Crimea in 2014, the response from London and Washington was nugatory. Our prime minister at the time? David Cameron.

Alastair Irvine
Grantham, Lincolnshire

SIR – The steady worldwide growth of prosperity in the 19th century was attributable in good measure to a largely stable world order, underpinned by the economic and naval dominance of a single power – Great Britain. 

This stability was sufficient to keep in check lesser local conflicts such as German and Italian unification. The same was true of the period after 1945, except that the dominant power had become the United States. 

The intervening period of chaos and destruction, 1914-45, arose because Britain and France had become too weak to continue as world authorities, and the United States didn’t adopt the role before 1941. 

A stable world order is essential for global prosperity and growth, and is therefore of equal benefit to the dominant power as to others, as the economic disorder of the period 1918-39 showed. The Russian invasion of Ukraine, and the failure of countries such as China to check it, threaten this state of affairs. It is absolutely right for European countries to upgrade their defence contributions to Nato, but the United States should benefit proportionately in economic prosperity from its own contribution (“Back Kyiv to show ‘borders matter’, Lord Cameron urges”, report, April 9).

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