Wars have no respect for our short attention spans. While the Israel-Gaza conflict has ignited heated
protests across Western capitals, with a mass march at the weekend raising the pressure on both Tories and
Labour over the impact of Israel’s tactics against Hamas on
Palestinians, another conflict is at a dangerous inflection point. It is also a war in which the
UK is most invested: the future of
Ukraine . The Foreign Secretary Lord Cameron told me in an interview not long ago that standing by Ukraine was the UK’s “absolute number one priority,” to prevent a slide into 30s aggression, where nations fuelled by twisted historical narratives can feel free to attack and occupy their neighbours and unleash multiple war crimes upon them. As a relative veteran in the region (I covered Ukraine’s fledgling independence in the 90s and have followed its struggle since to assert autonomy from an increasingly bellicose “big brother”), this is starting to feel like a “while you weren’t watching” story. And that is happening at a time when the tide of the war is perilously poised. This weekend alone,
Moscow has intensified attacks on Ukraine’s critical infrastructure. One of its biggest energy firms has lost 80 per cent of its energy generating capacity after a barrage of attacks across almost all regions. It is intended to disrupt weapons production – and cause more distress and suffering to the civilian population. Kyiv, a symbolic target of Putin’s attacks as the seat of independent Ukrainian power, is under renewed attack, one aimed more at morale than
MILITARY advantage. A new wave of conscription in
Russia will see a fresh generation of soldiers cast cynically into the cauldron of war. It’s hardly news that Kyiv’s Spring offensive to recapture territory has not yielded fruit. Ukraine’s major “wins” are at sea , not least with the help of targeting and naval intelligence supported by the US and UK, and a diminution of
Russian naval superiority which may well yield future successes as the role of sea power offsets the stalemate on land. That and the status of Crimea are the likely key to any imaginable end game. So this war of resistance is not a hopeless enterprise, but its turning points will not happen fast. On the home front, the Ukraine question is likely to re-assert itself in this
election year. The first is financial: the UK is the third-biggest supporter of the beleaguered country – behind America and
Germany. And for all the outpouring of support in the initial period of the war, political parties will have to prepare for voters asking what they are paying for – and the duration of the commitment. The UK has provided £12bn and a top-up for the year ahead agreed in January of £2.5bn. Read Next We can laugh at Putin’s election, but the toothless West is the real joke These are modest numbers in the context of the US commitment of over £60bn – with the next package of equivalent scale still stuck in
Congress cross-fire. But they are big enough costs to figure in the election conversation, on how the parties see their future spending commitments – and the values and loyalties that underlie them. Yet neither Rishi Sunak, who seems to have handed over responsibility for the UK’s role wholesale to Lord Cameron, nor Keir Starmer feel engaged in defining why Ukraine will continue to matter and be worth the financial outlay that keeps the UK in the forefront of international support. This will become even more prominent as the conflict develops into a longer-term commitment, with defeats and setbacks as well as the uplifting moments of Ukrainian courage and commitment. So we need to hear more from our own government, and indeed from the Labour party as the likely managers of foreign and defence policy in-waiting, about how they would address inevitable concerns that support for Ukraine is a blank cheque or that it is not “working” – when what we mean is that we are bored hearing about it. It is nonetheless a generation-defining conflict. Its outcome will determine how the West’s security fares, just as much in
London,
Berlin and
Washington as Kharkiv or Kyiv. President Putin’s gamble is that we are too confused or self-interested at national levels to keep going. Sustained arguments, agility and good old
British grit in supporting underdogs against bullies will play a part in proving him wrong. Mykhailo Podolyak, a senior adviser to Zelensky’s office has grasped that message, telling Politico this week that “investing in Ukraine is an investment in America’s reputation, in its dominance, in its right to prescribe global rules and make sure they’re not violated”. To which he might have added, an investment that relies not only in the US, but on key allies like the UK keeping the faith. Self-interest will play a justifiable role here as altruistic instincts to support a fledgling democracy in eastern Europe. But the combination of spending pressures at home, evanescent attention spans and competition for our pity and solidarity from other theatres of strife mean that it is easy to tire of an “old” war, long before its fate is clear. I was struck, in conversation with a group of bright Gen Zers at the weekend, by how much bandwidth they gave to climate change urgency and
Gaza as electoral issues – and that Ukraine was not mentioned once. If it becomes only the “cause” of those of my generation, who can remember the late Cold War and what is at stake when Europe’s borders are deemed to be fungible at the whim of despots, it will fall out of public attention. That would be an epochal mistake. A new tranche of voters needs to know why Ukraine matters to their security and futures. High time for Starmer and Sunak to start that conversation, about a war that will not go away. Anne McElvoy presents the Power Play podcast for Politico