Putin’s nuclear threats "will not deter Britain" - UK national security adviser

Britain will not be “deterred” by President Putin’s threats of nuclear escalation and will increase its support for Ukraine, the national security adviser has said.

Sir Tim Barrow said that the West needed to prevent a “frozen conflict” in Ukraine and dismissed the Kremlin’s “reckless” attempt to prevent more materiel being sent to Kyiv,  The Times reports.

Appearing before the national security strategy joint committee, Barrow, a former ambassador to both Moscow and Kyiv, said that he felt the suffering of the Ukrainian people “keenly” and added that the West needed to avoid a “long, drawn-out static conflict”.

Britain is attempting to orchestrate a deal that would see former Soviet jets sent to Ukraine and is preparing to donate longer-range missiles, with discussions taking place in Whitehall over the suitability of Harpoon anti-ship missiles or Stormshadow air-to-surface missiles, both of which would significantly increase Ukraine’s range. Barrow said that the government was “looking at our longer strike and . . . precision munitions”.

“We can’t sit passively in this. We need to accelerate our support,” he added. “Ukraine needs to have the means to defend itself and needs to be able to succeed on the battlefield.”

Liz Truss appointed Barrow, 59, as her national security adviser last year after working alongside him in the Foreign Office. The former ambassador to the European Union has remained in the same role under Rishi Sunak, and has been entrusted with a key role in negotiating the deal on the Northern Ireland protocol.

Barrow was ambassador to Ukraine for two years and ambassador to Russia from 2011 to 2016, a period that coincided with President Putin’s annexation of Crimea.
Asked about Putin’s nuclear rhetoric, he said: “We are not going to be deterred, we are going to be very clear about our support for Ukraine and ourselves call out and push back on reckless escalation language.”

He admitted that British ammunition stocks were running low after a year of conflict and said that the government was trying to encourage defence industries to restart production. “We are very conscious of the need to restock,” he said.

However, he insisted that recent defence spending had been sufficient after Ben Wallace, the defence secretary, demanded a £8 billion to £11 billion increase in the Ministry of Defence budget over the next two years.

“We’ve had a huge investment in the armed forces over recent years,” he said. “We had £242 billion over 10 years, we had £24 billion uplift over four years — the biggest since the Cold War — so we are investing.”