Britain on Tuesday said that its breakthrough decision to provide tanks to Ukraine to fight Russia was a “moral imperative,” while in Kyiv yesterday, Ukraine’s interior minister was among more than a dozen people killed in a helicopter crash near a kindergarten.
British Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs James Cleverly on a visit to Washington said that Britain was sending a signal to Russian President Vladimir Putin by backing Ukraine and becoming the first nation to agree to their request for Western tanks.
“What Putin should understand is we are going to have the strategic endurance to stick with them until the job is done. And the best thing that he can do to preserve the lives of his own troops is to recognize that we’re going to stick with Ukrainians until they are victorious,” Cleverly said at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “It all costs so much more in human lives and so much more in money if we allow this to be a long, drawn-out attritional war.”
Photo: Reuters
“There are body bags coming back from the front from Russia as well as Ukrainians, so the moral imperative is to bring this to a conclusion,” he said.
British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak on Saturday announced that his government would provide 14 Challenger 2 tanks, leading Russia to charge that Britain was worsening the conflict.
After meeting Cleverly, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said that “we applaud” the tank decision.
Photo: Reuters
Blinken also said that the US looked forward to keeping close consultation with the UK on many regional issues, including maintaining peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait.
Cleverly said that London and Washington shared commitments to peace and security in the Indo-Pacific region and that the “unique bond of trust” between the UK and the US is the only reason that the AUKUS trilateral security agreement between Australia, the UK and the US partnership is made possible.
Commenting on China’s growing assertiveness on the world stage, which poses a systematic challenge to many of our values and interests, Cleverly said that the UK should “recognize the need to manage competition with China, including through diplomacy and engagement.”
Cleverly also highlighted the need to augment the UK’s economic security with its allies and friends, and the necessity of bolstering its resilience and reducing strategic dependencies.
In Brovary, Ukraine, officials said that a helicopter carrying Ukranian Minister of the Interior Denys Monastyrsky slammed down next to a kindergarten and a residential building, killing 16 people, including one of the minister’s deputies and three children.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy described the crash of the helicopter, which was en route to the front line in eastern Ukraine, as a “terrible tragedy.”
There was no immediate claim from Kyiv that Russian forces were involved in downing the aircraft, and an investigation has been launched into the cause.
“A helicopter of the state emergency service crashed in Brovary. As a result of the crash, the leadership of the interior ministry died,” Ukrainian National Police head Igor Klymenko said in a statement.
He said that Monastyrsky and his first deputy, Yevgeniy Yenin, were killed.
Thirty people, including 12 children, were hospitalized, he said.
Additional reporting by Jake Chung and CNA
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