UK gives Ukraine anti-tank weapons as Canada sends special forces
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Loading... - Liam Jones
- 18 Jan 2022
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The United Kingdom has begun supplying Ukraine with anti-tank weapons and Canada has reportedly deployed a small contingent of special forces to Kyiv amid concerns of a possible invasion by Russia.
The developments came as Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov angrily rejected claims by the United States last week that Moscow was preparing a pretext to invade Ukraine if diplomacy failed to meet its objectives.
While Moscow – which has deployed 100,000 troops near its border with Ukraine – denies plans for an attack against Ukraine, it has said it could take unspecified military action unless the West agrees to a list of demands, including banning Kyiv from ever joining NATO.
Russia views NATO’s expansion eastwards as an existential threat.
But Washington and its allies have firmly rejected Moscow’s demands and Russia-US negotiations in Geneva and a related NATO-Russia meeting in Brussels ended last week without a breakthrough.
Kyiv has since asked Western countries for arms to help it protect itself.
Speaking in the British parliament on Monday, Defence Secretary Ben Wallace said the UK had “taken the decision to supply Ukraine with light anti-armour defensive weapon systems”.
The first weaponry was delivered on Monday and a small number of British personnel would provide training for a short period of time, he said, without specifying the number and type of weapons that were being sent.
But he added, “They are not strategic weapons and pose no threat to Russia. They are to use in self-defence.
“These are short-range …. but nevertheless it would make people pause and think what they were doing and if tanks were to roll into Ukraine, invade it, then they would be part of the defence mechanism.”
In a separate article published on Monday, Wallace also addressed Russian claims of threats from NATO, saying the Western security alliance is “to its core, defensive”.
“Former Soviet states have not been expanded ‘into’ by NATO, but joined at their own request,” he wrote. “The Kremlin attempts to present NATO as a Western plot to encroach upon its territory, but in reality, the growth in Alliance membership is the natural response of those states to its own malign activities and threats.” Read More…
