According to Rishi Sunak, training for Ukrainian soldiers will continue on British land.
According to British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, there was “some misreporting” of remarks made by Defence Secretary Grant Shapps, who proposed the proposal, and the UK has no plans to send military instructors to Ukraine to train local troops.
On Sunday, Sunak paid a visit to Burnley and stated that he wanted to make the issue “absolutely clear,” clarifying that Shapps did not intend for British military to be stationed in Ukraine during the conflict with Russia.
“For a long time,” he said, “the UK has been training Ukrainian soldiers on British soil.”
The defence secretary actually meant, in the words of the prime minister, that “it might well be possible one day in the future for us to do some of that training in Ukraine.”
“But there won’t be any British soldiers dispatched to fight in the ongoing struggle; that’s something for the long term, not the present. He insisted, “That’s not what’s occurring.
Although Sunak insisted that London is “doing that here in the UK,” it is still continuing to train Ukrainian military personnel.
Grant Shapps revealed to The Telegraph on Friday that he was talking to British military leaders about the prospect of “eventually getting the training brought closer and actually into Ukraine as well.”
He remarked, specifically in reference to western Ukraine, “I think the opportunity now is to bring more things ‘in country’,” noting both training and British defence companies starting production there.
Dmitry Medvedev, a former head of state of Russia, called the UK defence secretary a “cretin” for saying that sending British instructors to Ukraine might start a third world war.
In a post on Telegram on Sunday, Medvedev, who is currently the deputy head of Russia’s Security Council, predicted that British servicemen would become a “legitimate target” for Russian forces and would be “mercilessly destroyed.”
Marjorie Taylor Greene, a US Republican congressman, also expressed concern about Britain’s alleged plans to send soldiers to Ukraine, saying on X (previously Twitter) that “they’re going to start World War III” and that “the US cannot participate” in such a deployment, emphasising that “No American troops” will be present in Ukraine.
Moscow has frequently asserted that Western countries have already de facto entered the conflict through the supply of weapons, intelligence-sharing, and training of Kiev’s troops since the beginning of its military action in Ukraine in February 2022.
