On April 4th on the BBC’s Ukrainecast podcast, UK Foreign Secretary, David Cameron, ruled out the possibility of “Western boots on the ground” in Ukraine. “We don’t want to give Putin a target like that,” Cameron claimed. This comes after Russian state media outlet, RT, released an audio recording last month of a conversation between German air force officers, discussing how British soldiers were, in fact, in Ukraine. In the recording, which was authenticated by Germany, Lt Gen Ingo Gerhartz, the head of the Luftwaffe, stated that he “knows how the English do it, they do it completely in reachback”, referring to the UK’s “mission planning”. Gerhartz went on to say that “they also have a few people on the ground, they do that, the French don’t”, which all but confirms Cameron’s claims as invalid; or worse, intentionally misleading.
Reachback is a military term used to describe the process of obtaining equipment, services, intelligence, and other kinds of support from forces that are not forward deployed. The German commander was referring to British forces helping Ukraine deploy their Storm Shadow missiles to hit high value targets in Russian territory. These weapons were provided to Ukraine by the UK and France, the two primary operators and manufacturers of the cruise missile, which has a range of more than 250 km. The noteworthy takeaway from the leak is that Cameron’s comments about avoiding “boots on the ground” is evidently smoke and mirrors.
Rather than simply lamenting the blatant intelligence failure, Germany’s Defence Minister said that the interception and publication of this conversation was “part of an information war that Putin is waging”. Disinformation coming from Kremlin-controlled media outlets is nothing new to Western ears and any reports from Moscow must always be rigorously interrogated. However, given that the leaked audio was authenticated, and British soldiers were confirmed to be on the ground in Ukraine, labelling this revelation as some kind of Russian disinformation tactic is another example of how comfortable Western officials have become with branding true information as Kremlin propaganda, especially when they see that information as inconvenient. Besides, it wasn’t only this leak that indicates UK troops are in Ukraine. Leaked Pentagon documents from April 2023 also showed that multiple Western nations have special operations forces stationed in Ukraine. The documents revealed that the UK had by far the largest network of special forces personnel in the country, with 50 in total. Latvia was a distant second, with 17. There was also a report of British SAS forces being deployed to Ukraine back in April 2022, soon after the war began, although this was never confirmed by the UK Ministry of Defence.
In lieu of Cameron’s false claims, previous revelations about the Western presence in Ukraine are essential to revisit. Most notably, this February, in a rare turn of events, the New York Times reported on the presence of 12 CIA bases in Ukraine along the Russian border, as well as the existence of CIA training programs for Ukrainian Special Forces dating back to 2016. According to the report, this secret relationship between U.S. intelligence and Ukraine's government was forged back in 2014, after President Viktor Yanukovych was ousted from Ukraine. This was followed by the State Department hand selecting the new Ukrainian government. Typically, the U.S. National Security State does not allow this kind of information to be reported in mainstream media publications. They usually conceal these realities as part of their own information wars, used to legitimise hawkish foreign policy decisions made under the auspices of “preserving democracy”. As a side note, both the U.S. and Soviet history of interventions have “equally detrimental effects on the subsequent level of democracy; both decrease democracy by 33%” according to analysis from the Brookings Institute. The U.S. and Russia have overthrown too many democracies to feign altruism for the sovereignty of other nations.
Considering the timing of the NYT report, it may have been permitted as a way of reminding the public, and more importantly Congress, just how entrenched the US are in this proxy conflict, with the hope of pushing through the $60 billion Ukraine aid package that the House of Representatives had failed to ratify. Nonetheless, a litany of reports have confirmed that British special forces are not only in Ukraine, but that U.S. intelligence personnel have been forging deep ties with Kyiv for many years, with the hope of turning them into a strategic bulwark against Russia.
From a legal standpoint, if Ukraine were a NATO ally, Putin and the Russian foreign policy establishment would have no leg to stand on when it comes to criticising the presence of Western troops there. Moreover, Cameron’s lack of transparency would be strategically palatable, as the UK would be at war. However, Ukraine is not a NATO member, which makes the legality of UK troops there a murky subject. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is a war of aggression, and therefore, a flagrant breach of Article 24 of the UN Charter. This means that providing arms to Russia, the belligerent in this conflict, would violate international law. Conversely, a neutral country supplying arms to Ukraine is legally permitted under international law. States would however “become parties to the international armed conflict between Russia and Ukraine if, and only if, they resort to armed force against Russia” according to analysts at the Lawfare Institute. Therefore, the UK would become a co-combatant if they have troops involved in a combat operation that entails launching a missile, or any other kind of attack, against Russian forces or targets. In light of the recently leaked materials, it appears that some variation of this scenario may have already taken place.
If the West’s goal is truly to defend Ukrainian sovereignty and not to simply gain a strategic advantage over Russia; forbidding the presence of Western troops and intelligence personnel in Ukraine should be an obvious prerequisite. Furthermore, relinquishing the predominantly Russian oblasts in Eastern Ukraine while allowing the Western ‘half’ of the country to be a neutral, yet Western-oriented liberal democracy, should be a sufficient win for both Russia and supporters of self-determination and democratic values.
Unfortunately, last week, U.S. Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, all but erased the hope of Ukrainian neutrality being the diplomatic release valve to this conflict. He doubled down on the West’s position, stating definitively that “Ukraine will become a member of NATO”. Considering Blinken’s comments, David Cameron’s false claims, and the apparently systemic involvement of U.S. intelligence personnel in Ukraine, in addition to UK special forces, the West seems too dug in to even entertain such concessions. It is clear that Putin has demonstrated little to no concern for Ukrainian lives in the pursuit of his strategic objectives.
Be that as it may, given the presence of Western military and intelligence personnel in Ukraine, despite the intelligence community’s understanding that this is Russia’s brightest redline; it is not unreasonable to assume that, like Putin, Western officials care less about minimising the carnage wrought upon the nation of Ukraine and its people, and more about protecting their strategic interests there.
Image: UK Government
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