British citizens should be ‘trained and equipped’ to fight in a potential war with Russia, military chief says
British citizens should be “trained and equipped” to fight in a potential war with Russia – as Moscow plans on “defeating our system and way of life”, the head of the British Army has said.
General Sir Patrick Sanders, the outgoing Chief of the General Staff (CGS), said increasing army numbers in preparation for a potential conflict would need to be a “whole-of-nation undertaking”.
The comments, first reported by the Daily Telegraph, are being read as a warning that British men and women should be ready for a call-up to the armed forces if NATO goes to war with Vladimir Putin.
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It comes after Defence Secretary Grant Shapps said in a speech last week that we are “moving from a post-war to pre-war world” and the UK must ensure its “entire defence ecosystem is ready” to defend its homeland.
But Downing Street ruled out any move towards a conscription model, saying that army service would remain voluntary.
Sir Patrick has been a vocal critic of cuts to troop numbers and military spending.
In his speech at the International Armoured Vehicles conference in west London, he said the UK must urgently expand the size of the army to around 120,000 within three years – up from around 74,000 now.
But he said “this is not enough” and training and equipping a “citizen army” must follow.
He pointed to this happening across Europe, telling the audience: “Our friends in eastern and northern Europe, who feel the proximity of the Russian threat more acutely, are already acting prudently, laying the foundations for national mobilisation.
“As the chairman of the NATO military committee warned just last week, and as the Swedish government has done…taking preparatory steps to enable placing our societies on a war footing when needed are now not merely desirable but essential.”
Sir Patrick added: “We will not be immune and as the pre-war generation we must similarly prepare – and that is a whole-of-nation undertaking.
“Ukraine brutally illustrates that regular armies start wars; citizen armies win them.”
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Sir Patrick added that Ukraine was currently the “principal pressure point on a fragile world order that our enemies wish to dismantle”.
He continued: “(The war in Ukraine) is not merely about the black soil of the Donbas, nor the re-establishment of a Russian empire, it’s about defeating our system and way of life politically, psychologically, and symbolically.
“How we respond as the pre-war generation will reverberate through history. Ukrainian bravery is buying time, for now.”
Sir Patrick also said that our predecessors “stumbled into the most ghastly of wars” after failing to “perceive the implications of the so-called July Crisis in 1914”, referring to a series of diplomatic and military escalations leading to the outbreak of the First World War.
“We cannot afford to make the same mistake today,” he added.
Sir Patrick will be replaced as CGS in June by General Sir Roly Walker, an announcement that followed reports he was being forced out in response to his outspoken comments.
Tobias Ellwood, a former defence minister who has served alongside Sir Patrick, said the military chief should be “listened to carefully”.
“What’s coming over the horizon should shock us. It should worry us and we are not prepared,” he told Sky News.
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British Army numbers to be ‘73,000’
The MP for Bournemouth East said that following decades of post-Cold War peace, there was a growing sense authoritarian states could “exploit our timidity, perhaps our reluctance to really put fires out” – pointing to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
“So Patrick Sanders is saying prepare for what’s coming over the horizon – there is a 1939 feel to the world right now,” he said.
“These authoritarian states are rearming. There’s a risk averseness about the West in wanting to deal with that and our global institutions such as the United Nations aren’t able to hold these errant nations to account.”
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Mr Ellwood went on to say the army was “overstretched”, in part because of issues to do with pay and accommodation.
He said the army, as well as the navy, was about “half the size of what it should be” while the RAF was lacking the equipment it needs.
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Will defence spending hit 2.5%?
Warnings about the “shrinking size” of the army have also been sounded by former military chief General Lord Dannatt, who told The Times numbers had reduced from 102,000 in 2006 to 74,000 today and were still “falling fast”.
He drew parallels with the 1930s when the “woeful” state of the UK’s armed forces failed to deter Adolf Hitler, saying there was “a serious danger of history repeating itself”.
Speaking to Sky News about the comments, Mr Shapps insisted the size of the army would not dip below 73,000 under the Conservatives’ watch – even as he resisted Lord Dannatt’s calls to up the defence budget.
The government is currently spending around 2% of GDP on defence, but some want to see it rise to 3%.
The government’s target is 2.5%, but Mr Shapps told Sky News on Sunday that “we’re not there yet”.
Braden John Karony, the CEO of crypto firm SafeMoon, has cited the US Department of Justice’s directive to no longer pursue some crypto charges in an effort to get the case against him and his firm dismissed.
In an April 9 letter to New York federal court judge Eric Komitee, Karony’s attorney, Nicholas Smith, said the court should consider an April 7 memo from US Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche that disbanded the DOJ’s crypto unit.
“The Department of Justice is not a digital assets regulator,” Blanche said in the memo, which added the DOJ “will no longer pursue litigation or enforcement actions that have the effect of superimposing regulatory frameworks on digital assets.”
Blanche also directed prosecutors not to charge violations of securities and commodities laws when the case would require the DOJ to determine if a digital asset is a security or commodity when charges such as wire fraud are available.
An excerpt of the letter Karony sent to Judge Komitee. Source: PACER
In the footnote of the letter, Karony’s counsel wrote an exemption to the DOJ’s new directive would be if the parties have an interest in defending that a crypto asset is a security, but added that “Karony does not have such an interest.”
The Justice Department and the Securities and Exchange Commission filed simultaneous charges of securities violations, wire fraud, and money laundering against Karony and other SafeMoon executives in November 2023.
The government alleged Karony, SafeMoon creator Kyle Nagy and chief technology officer Thomas Smith withdrew assets worth $200 million from the project and misappropriated investor funds.
Another attempt to nix the case
The letter is Karony’s latest attempt to get the case thrown out. In February, he asked that his trial, scheduled to begin on March 31, be delayed as he argued President Donald Trump’s proposed crypto policies could potentially affect the case.
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Later in February, Smith changed his plea to guilty and said he took part in the alleged $200 million crypto fraud scheme. Nagy is at large and is believed to be in Russia.
SafeMoon filed for bankruptcy in December 2023, a month after it was hit with twin cases from the SEC and DOJ. It was also hacked in March 2023, with the hacker agreeing to return 80% of the funds.
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Ukraine’s financial regulator has proposed taxing certain crypto transactions as personal income at a rate of up to 23% but excluding crypto-to-crypto transactions and stablecoins.
Crypto transactions would be taxed at 18% with a 5% military levy on top as part of the proposed framework, released on April 8 by Ukraine’s National Securities and Stock Market Commission.
NSSMC Chairman Ruslan Magomedov said in an April 8 statement that “the issue of crypto taxes is not a hypothesis, but a reality that is fast approaching.”
He added that the agency created the framework to help lawmakers make an “informed resolution” by considering each suggestion’s advantages and disadvantages because “these aspects can have a critical impact on the market and tax liability.”
Under the NSSMC’s proposed crypto framework, a tax will be applied when crypto is cashed out for fiat currency or exchanged for goods or services.
Crypto-to-crypto transactions wouldn’t be taxed, bringing Ukraine in line with other European countries, including Austria and France, as well as crypto-friendly jurisdictions like Singapore, the NSSMC said.
The regulator says it “makes sense” to exclude stablecoins backed by foreign currencies or only apply a 5% or 9% tax because Ukraine’s tax code already excludes income from transactions in “foreign exchange values.”
A translated excerpt of the NSSMC’s report said stablecoins backed by foreign currencies could be exempt from taxation. Source: NSSMC
Mining, staking, hard forks and airdrops
Other crypto-related activities, such as mining, staking and airdrops, are also addressed in the framework which floated a few options for taxation.
The NSSMC said crypto mining is generally considered a business activity, but there might be a general tax-free limit for certain crypto transactions, including mining.
Under the framework, staking could be considered as “business captive income” or only taxed if the crypto is cashed out for fiat currencies. While hard forks and airdrops could be taxed either as ordinary income or when the tokens are cashed.
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The regulator suggests a tax-free threshold could help “relieve the burden on small investors” and is common in other jurisdictions.
Exemptions for donations, transfers between family members, and holders who keep their crypto for a set amount of time are also flagged as possibilities. However, the NSSMC says the exemption might not apply to non-custodial crypto wallets.
Last December, Daniil Getmantsev, head of the tax committee of Ukraine’s parliament, said a draft bill to legalize cryptocurrencies was under review and expected to be finalized early this year.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy first signed a law establishing a legal framework for the country to operate a regulated crypto market in March 2022.
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Digital asset manager 21Shares has filed with the US Securities and Exchange Commission to launch a spot Dogecoin exchange-traded fund, following similar filings from rivals Bitwise and Grayscale.
The 21Shares Dogecoin ETF would seek to track the price of the memecoin Dogecoin (DOGE), according to the firm’s April 9 Form S-1 registration statement. The Dogecoin Foundation’s corporate arm, House of Doge, plans to assist 21Shares with marketing the fund.
21Shares said Coinbase Custody would be the proposed custodian of its Dogecoin ETF but did not specify a fee, ticker or what stock exchange it would list on.
Source: James Seyffart
21Shares must also file a 19b-4 filing with the SEC to kickstart the regulator’s approval process for the fund.
DOGE currently has a $24.2 billion market cap and is the eighth-largest cryptocurrency by value. It was created in 2013 as a joke and is a fork of Lucky Coin, which itself is a fork of Bitcoin.
21Shares’ proposed Dogecoin ETF is the company’s latest effort to expand its spot crypto ETF offerings, which currently includes only a spot Bitcoin (BTC) and Ether (ETH) fund.
The issuer also filed with the SEC in February to launch a spot Polkadot (DOT) ETF and last year, it filed to create a spot XRP (XRP) ETF.
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The recent surge in crypto ETF filings reflects a “spaghetti cannon approach” from issuers testing which products the new SEC leadership might approve, Bloomberg ETF analyst James Seyffart said in February.
“Issuers will try to launch many many different things and see what sticks,” Seyffart said.
Seyffart and fellow Bloomberg ETF analyst Eric Balchunas said in February that there is a 75% chance that the SEC will approve a spot Dogecoin ETF this year, while the betting platform Polymarket currently gives approval odds of 64%.
21Shares and House of Doge partner for DOGE funds in Switzerland
21Shares also said on April 9 that it partnered with House of Doge to launch a fully backed Dogecoin exchange-traded product on Switzerland’s SIX Swiss Exchange.
The 21Shares Dogecoin product will trade under the ticker “DOGE” with a 2.5% fee.
21Shares president Duncan Moir said that Dogecoin “has become more than a cryptocurrency: it represents a cultural and financial movement that continues to drive mainstream adoption, and DOGE offers investors a regulated avenue to be part of this exciting project.”
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