Rishi Sunak on sending British troops to Ukraine: May be possible but no plans

British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said that there were no immediate plans to deploy military instructors to Ukraine after reported comments by UK’s defence minister that he wanted to begin training Ukrainian troops in the country.

British defence minister Grant Shapps said in an interview with The Sunday Telegraph newspaper that he wanted to deploy military instructors to Ukraine as well as train Ukrainian armed forces in Britain or other Western countries.

“I was talking today about eventually getting the training brought closer and actually into Ukraine as well,” he was quoted as saying. “Particularly in the west of the country, I think the opportunity now is to bring more things ‘in country’,” he added that he hoped British defence companies such as BAE systems would proceed with plans to set up arms factories in Ukraine.

What UK PM Rishi Sunak said?

Rishi Sunak said there were no immediate plans to send British troops to Ukraine.

“What the defence secretary was saying was that it might well be possible one day in the future for us to do some of that training in Ukraine,” Rishi Sunak said at the start of the governing Conservative Party’s annual conference in Manchester.

“But that’s something for the long term, not the here and now. There are no British soldiers that will be sent to fight in the current conflict,” he added.

Former Russian president Dmitry Medvedev said any British soldiers training Ukrainian troops in Ukraine would be legitimate targets for Russian forces.

Britain has already provided five-week military training courses to around 20,000 Ukrainians over the past year.