The U.K. and the U.S. are great allies, but on Ukraine there’s a disagreement brewing. The Brits would like the Americans to be more aggressive, and the U.S. wants the U.K. to be more cautious.
The disagreement revolves mainly around weaponry. The U.K. last week announced it will send Storm Shadow cruise missiles to Ukraine, and it has provided thousands of man-portable antitank systems to Kyiv. The U.K. has also provided boutique electronic warfare and intelligence support to Ukraine. Yet although British support pales in comparison with the weapons and financial aid provided by the U.S., the U.K has shown a sustained willingness to send its best weapons to Ukraine.
It isn’t only weapons; it’s people too. U.K. special forces from the British Army’s SAS and SRR regiments and the Navy’s SBS units are
operating very close to the front lines. These personnel are serving as key interlocutors between North Atlantic Treaty Organization intelligence efforts and Ukrainian forces. They aren’t fighting, but their guiding influence on Ukrainian special-forces activity is evident in the sabotage operations Ukraine has conducted against Russian railway, airfield, fuel and other logistical nodes. The British army is also regarded by the Ukrainian military command as its most reliable advisory partner.
This support would once have seemed inconceivable. British policy toward Russia from 2006 through 2022 was defined by overt appeasement. Britain’s domestic intelligence service, MI5, was overwhelmingly focused on Islamist terrorist threats during this period. As vast amounts of questionable Russian money flowed into London, successive U.K. governments simply turned a blind eye to Russian foreign policy—including the murder of dissident Alexander Litvinenko on British soil in 2006.
The March 2018 poisonings in the English city of Salisbury changed Britain’s threat assessment. Russian GRU military intelligence operatives used Novichok, a highly concentrated Soviet-era nerve agent, to poison Sergei Skripal, a former GRU officer who had defected to the U.K., and his daughter. While the Skripals survived, an unrelated British woman died several months later after she handled the discarded nerve-agent delivery mechanism, which was disguised as a perfume bottle. A police officer was also seriously wounded after visiting Mr. Skripal’s residence. The brutal recklessness of these attacks provoked global diplomatic expulsions of Russian intelligence officers and the shared anger of the U.K. political establishment and population.
Still, London’s relations with Moscow warmed until it became clear late in 2021 that
Vladimir Putin intended a major invasion of Ukraine. The high confidence of the U.S. and British governments that such an invasion was approaching was heavily supported by British intercepts of Russian military and political communications. But for Prime Minister
Boris Johnson, the Russian attack provoked a deeper personal reaction.
Long a Russophile, Mr. Johnson had cultivated Conservative Party connections with Russian oligarchs in London. He even made Evgeny Lebedev, son of a Putin-associated oligarch, a life member of the House of Lords. But the attack on Ukraine changed something for Mr. Johnson, a devoted admirer of Winston Churchill. The theme of Mr. Johnson’s 2014 biography of the legendary wartime prime minister was the intersection of Churchill’s innate greatness and the moment of greatest consequence. In Russia’s attack on Ukraine, the commencement of the largest war in Europe since 1945, Mr. Johnson sensed his own Churchillian moment. Crucially, he also sensed an opportunity to prove that his post-Brexit Britain would remain a global power.
Quickly deploying special forces to Ukraine alongside a large number of varied weapons and other intelligence capabilities, Mr. Johnson went all-in. Ukraine’s gratitude was evident in the personal connection Mr. Johnson established with President Volodymyr Zelensky. The ensuing success of these efforts for Ukraine’s defense, and the prestige they have lent to U.K. foreign policy, allowed Mr. Johnson’s two successors to continue his efforts. While Prime Minister Rishi Sunak is seen as risk-averse on China by many in London and Washington, he has doubled down on support for Ukraine.
Always behind the scenes, Britain, Poland and the Baltic states have lamented what they regard as the Biden administration’s lethargy in supplying Kyiv with the advanced weapons it requests. American caution is evident in other areas. When a Russian jet fighter fired on a British spy plane over the Black Sea in September 2022, the U.K. responded by deploying its own jet fighters to escort future spy flights. In contrast, when Russian jet fighters downed a U.S. drone over the Black Sea this March, the Biden administration ordered future drone flights to steer clear of the battlefield.
Coordination on Ukraine between Washington and London remains unparalleled in the West. But for London, the risk of provoking the Kremlin is viewed as less important than the reward of enabling Ukraine’s victory. And that is as much about Churchill, Brexit and Novichok as it is about Ukraine.
