UK Military Officials Reportedly Call Starmer's Plans for Ukraine 'Political Theater'
© AP Photo / Alastair Grant
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MOSCOW (Sputnik) - UK military calls PM Keir Starmer's plans to send peacekeepers of the so-called "coalition of the willing" to Ukraine a "political theater" — in their opinion, the prime minister was hasty with such statements, since no one has any idea about the details of such a mission, the Telegraph reported, citing senior military sources.
Earlier, Starmer's spokesperson said that more than 30 countries were expected to join the so-called "coalition of the willing" — a group of states ready to deploy peacekeepers in Ukraine and provide Kiev with security guarantees.
"There is no defined military end-state or military-strategic planning assumptions. It’s all political theater," one senior UK military source told the publication. "Starmer got ahead of himself with talk of boots on the ground before he knew what he was talking about, which is why we hear less about it now and more about jets and vessels, which are easier to do and don’t need basing in Ukraine."
One of the sources added that neither Russia nor the United States supported the idea of a UK-led coalition, and warned that negotiations on it are complicated by the fact that "no one knows what the mission is."
"It cannot even protect itself. What is the mission? What is its legitimacy? What are the rules of engagement? How is it commanded, supplied and housed? How long is it there for and why? No one knows," the source said.
The Russian Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) said last year that the West would deploy a so-called peacekeeping contingent of about 100,000 people in the country to restore Ukraine's combat capability. The SVR believes that this would be a de facto occupation of Ukraine. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov stated that the deployment of peacekeepers was only possible with the consent of the parties to a particular conflict. According to Peskov, it is premature to talk about peacekeepers in Ukraine.
