Britain will provide £17 million ($23 million) to fund critical repairs to the Chernobyl power plant hit by a Russian drone attack.as Andy Burnham seeks to shore up his support for Ukraine despite doubts about long-term US commitment. The UK will help restore its protective shelter and ventilation, which was damaged in an attack last year, amid concerns that corrosion could create long-term environmental and security risks, the Chancellor and Foreign Secretary announced on Thursday. The pledge comes after Burnham welcomed Volodymyr Zelenskyy to Downing Street, where he told the Ukrainian president that the UK was “behind you and that will not change”.
The meeting took place during a period of tense relations between Kyiv and Washington. after it emerged that the Ukrainian military’s access to Elon Musk’s Starlink technology was limited in key areas, rendering most of the drones used to strike behind the front lines unusable and reducing its air defenses.
Russia is already at war with NATO, a former commander-in-chief of the military alliance has said. Retired four-star Gen. Curtis Scaparrotti, who served as supreme allied commander in Europe from 2016 to 2019, warned there was a long-term plan behind the Kremlin’s “disingenuous activities” against member countries and stressed the need to protect critical installations. “If you look at it the way it is, we are at war with Russia today, within the alliance, because they are taking steps that are intended to undermine the ability of each country to sustain the war, to undermine the confidence of their civilians in their own government or within NATO, and to break up NATO,” he said in Washington.
The United States has proposed to European countries to unblock certain Russian sovereign assets. and transfer them to a vehicle supervised by Washington in an attempt to restart peace talks, the Financial Times reported on Wednesday. European delegates reportedly rejected the plan from US special envoy Steve Witkoff and Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner.
Questions about the future of support for Ukraine in Europe were highlighted Wednesday by the rise of far-right parties.. that of France Marine Le Pen, who current polls predict is expected to win next year’s presidential election, said Paris could not continue financing Ukraine because of the “perilous” state of the eurozone’s second-largest economy. The German far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) and the small left-wing party BSW The party joined forces on Wednesday to pass a symbolic motion in the state parliament of Saxony-Anhalt calling for an end to Berlin’s military support for Ukraine. The motion has no practical effect, because state legislatures have no role in foreign policy.
Shares of European satellite operator Eutelsat soared following news of Ukraine’s difficulties with Starlink technologyfueled by investors’ bets that European suppliers could benefit from growing tensions between Washington and kyiv. But experts say Europe does not have a ready-made alternative that Ukrainian soldiers could attach to their drones. Christian Freiherr von der Ropp, an independent satellite consultant, said Eutelsat’s OneWeb network was not well suited for wartime use and would require the replacement of thousands of Starlink terminals. European Defense Commissioner Andrius Kubilius told a conference in Brussels on Wednesday that the continent was very dependent on US space capabilities. “The answer to this situation is to develop our own capabilities,” he said.
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