UK and Europe must step up over Ukraine, says ex-Army boss

The UK and Europe may need to offer security guarantees to Ukraine in the event of a deal with Russia, regardless of US support, the former head of the British armed forces has said on a BBC One Question Time special.

Retired General Sir Nick Carter said he believed it was for Ukraine to decide what a “fair settlement” meant, but that the UK and European countries needed to “step up to the plate” to guarantee Ukraine’s sovereignty “if the Americans are not prepared to do that”.

Earlier this week, Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer said a “US security guarantee was the only way to effectively deter Russia”.

A rift appeared to deepen in recent days between Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and US President Donald Trump, who has said America will soon begin direct negotiations with Russia.

Sir Keir said the UK was willing to provide peacekeeping troops if necessary, but a US “backstop” would be needed.

He did not explain what he meant by this but others have suggested it could involve air support, logistics and intelligence capabilities.

The prime minister is due to visit Washington next week for talks with the US president at which he is expected to maintain his support for Zelensky and Ukraine’s government while seeking to gain Trump’s ear over talks with Russia.

According to the White House, Sir Keir will visit on Thursday, following a separate visit by French President Emmanuel Macron to see Trump on Monday.

Macron is seeking to co-ordinate a European response and said he had spoken to Zelensky to discuss the diplomatic situation ahead of his trip.

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau also spoke to Zelensky, repeating Canada’s support and stressing that Kyiv must be involved in any negotiations to end the war.

The US president has called Zelensky a “dictator” and suggested Ukraine was responsible for the full-scale Russian invasion in February 2022, saying a peace deal could have been struck earlier.

The Ukrainian leader said the US president was “living in a disinformation space” created by Moscow.

Washington has also suggested Europe needs to take greater responsibility for its own defence.

Sir Nick, the former chief of the defence staff – who held the role between 2018 and 2021 – said he thought the UK and other European allies had “got to state a position”.

“I think that fundamentally there has got to be some form of guarantee of Ukraine’s sovereignty in the future,” he said.

He warned the UK armed forces were “remarkably hollow” after a “process of neglect over a 30-year period”.

“I think we also need to be clear about how vulnerable our country is,” he said, describing how much of the UK’s critical infrastructure was dependent on undersea cables or not “not properly protected by cyber defences”.

He said: “We are in a position I think where we are massively vulnerable at the moment. And whether we like it or not that means we’re going to have to start protecting ourselves.

“And the sort of onslaught that Ukraine has suffered from the air via drones and missiles over the course of the last three years is unsustainable as far as the UK’s concerned.

“We might be able to park a destroyer in the Thames to protect parts of London but nothing more than that.”

Thursday’s Question Time panel included Sir Nick; Ukrainian MP Lesia Vasylenko, a member of the liberal, pro-European opposition Holos party; Jan Halper-Hayes, who has served as a campaign adviser to Trump; Cabinet Office minister Nick Thomas-Symonds; and Conservative former defence secretary Sir Ben Wallace.

Ukrainian refugees among the audience spoke about the trauma of seeing their country torn apart by war.