Absence of defensive shield should ring very loud alarm bells as UK faces Russian threats
Facing the threat of an attack from Russia, Sir Keir Starmer has finally revealed he will “set out the path” to raise defence spending to 2.5% of national income in the spring.
But merely offering a timeframe to reveal an even-further-off-in-the-future date for when expenditure will increase to a level most analysts agree is still woefully short of what is required is hardly the most convincing display of deterrence and overwhelming strength.
What the prime minister should perhaps instead be doing is making very clear to Vladimir Putin – with new NATO-wide military exercises and the immediate hardening of UK defences – that his government is prepared for any Russian strike and the devastating cost to Moscow would be so astronomical as to make even the thought of hitting a UK target utter madness.
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A failure to relay back to the Kremlin a genuinely resilient and tough message, raises the risk that the Russian president will increasingly regard Britain as vulnerable – despite the UK being a nuclear power and a member of the NATO alliance.
It should come as a surprise to no one that Mr Putin has ramped up the rhetoric against Britain and the United States in the wake of both countries allowing Ukraine to fire their missiles inside Russia in the past few days.
In a series of blunt messages, he first lowered the threshold for the use of nuclear weapons, then fired what he has described as a new kind of intermediate-range, “unstoppable” missile and finally warned that he has lots more of them, signalling that British and American military sites could be targets.
The warning clearly means UK military bases and warships, at home and overseas, are at higher risk.
Yet there is little evidence that anything is being done to ramp up protection around them or signal publicly back to Russia in a meaningful way that such a move would not be wise.
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Asked whether any changes have been made to put the UK military on a higher state of alert, a Ministry of Defence spokesperson said: “There has been no recent change to our general security posture across our bases in the UK or overseas.
“We constantly monitor the threats we face and our armed forces remain ready to protect the UK’s interests at home and abroad.”
There is also the inescapable – and well-known – fact that the UK lacks the ability to defend itself from large-scale missile attacks after decades of defence cuts.
It is a problem for all European NATO countries, but as Britain is the one that is being directly threatened by Moscow, then this absence of any kind of defensive shield should really be ringing very loud alarm bells.
The Russian leader has put his country on a war footing in the wake of his full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
Defence spending in Russia is set to rise by a quarter next year to 6.3% of GDP – the highest level since the Cold War.
UK military chiefs and the defence minister point to the cost to Russia – in terms of the number of soldiers killed and injured in Ukraine and the burden of the war on the economy – as a sign that the Kremlin is struggling.
But that is surely only regarding the data through a peacetime lens, rather than reflecting on the fact that Russia appears willing and able to absorb the cost and still keep fighting.
Unless the UK and its NATO allies wake up to the need to put their countries on some kind of war footing too, then their ability to counter Russian aggression and deter threats may be lost.
Donald Trump has agreed to send “top of the line weapons” to NATO to support Ukraine – and threatened Russia with “severe” tariffs if it doesn’t agree to end the war.
Speaking with NATO secretary general Mark Rutte during a meeting at the White House, the US president said: “We’ve made a deal today where we are going to be sending them weapons, and they’re going to be paying for them.
“This is billions of dollars worth of military equipment which is going to be purchased from the United States,” he added, “going to NATO, and that’s going to be quickly distributed to the battlefield.”
Weapons being sent include surface-to-air Patriot missile systems and batteries, which Ukraine has asked for to defend itself from Russian air strikes.
Pic: Reuters
Mr Trump also said he was “very unhappy” with Russia, and threatened “severe tariffs” of “about 100%” if there isn’t a deal to end the war in Ukraine within 50 days.
The White House added that the US would put “secondary sanctions” on countries that buy oil from Russia if an agreement was not reached.
It comes after weeks of frustration from Mr Trump against Vladimir Putin’s refusal to agree to an end to the conflict, with the Russian leader telling the US president he would “not back down” from Moscow’s goals in Ukraine at the start of the month.
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Trump says Putin ‘talks nice and then bombs everybody’
During the briefing on Monday, Mr Trump said he had held calls with Mr Putin where he would think “that was a nice phone call,” but then “missiles are launched into Kyiv or some other city, and that happens three or four times”.
“I don’t want to say he’s an assassin, but he’s a tough guy,” he added.
Earlier this year, Mr Trump told Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelenskyy “you’re gambling with World War Three” in a fiery White House meeting, and suggested Ukraine started the war against Russia as he sought to negotiate an end to the conflict.
After Mr Trump’s briefing, Russian senator Konstantin Kosachev said on Telegram: “If this is all that Trump had in mind to say about Ukraine today, then all the steam has gone out.”
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Meanwhile, Mr Zelenskyy met with US special envoy Keith Kellogg in Kyiv, where they “discussed the path to peace” by “strengthening Ukraine’s air defence, joint production, and procurement of defence weapons in collaboration with Europe”.
He thanked both the envoy for the visit and Mr Trump “for the important signals of support and the positive decisions for both our countries”.
At least 30 people have been killed in the Syrian city of Sweida in clashes between local military groups and tribes, according to Syria’s interior ministry.
Officials say initial figures suggest around 100 people have also been injured in the city, where the Druze faith is one of the major religious groups.
The interior ministry said its forces will directly intervene to resolve the conflict, which the Reuters news agency said involved fighting between Druze gunmen and Bedouin Sunni tribes.
It marks the latest episode of sectarian violence in Syria, where fears among minority groups have increased since Islamist-led rebels toppled President Bashar al Assad in December, installing their own government and security forces.
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In March, Sky’s Stuart Ramsay described escalating violence within Syria
The violence reportedly erupted after a wave of kidnappings, including the abduction of a Druze merchant on Friday on the highway linking Damascus to Sweida.
Last April, Sunni militia clashed with armed Druze residents of Jaramana, southeast of Damascus, and fighting later spread to another district near the capital.
But this is the first time the fighting has been reported inside the city of Sweida itself, the provincial capital of the mostly Druze province.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) reports the fighting was centred in the Maqwas neighbourhood east of Sweida and villages on the western and northern outskirts of the city.
It adds that Syria’s Ministry of Defence has deployed military convoys to the area.
Western nations, including the US and UK, have been increasingly moving towards normalising relations with Syria.
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Concerns among minority groups have intensified following the killing of hundreds of Alawites in March, in apparent retaliation for an earlier attack carried out by Assad loyalists.
That was the deadliest sectarian flare-up in years in Syria, where a 14-year civil war ended with Assad fleeing to Russia after his government was overthrown by rebel forces.
The city of Sweida is in southern Syria, about 24 miles (38km) north of the border with Jordan.
The man convicted of the murder of British student Meredith Kercher has been charged with sexual assault against an ex-girlfriend.
Rudy Guede, 38, was the only person who was definitively convicted of the murder of 21-year-old Ms Kercher in Perugia, Italy, back in 2007.
He will be standing trial again in November after an ex-girlfriend filed a police report in the summer of 2023 accusing Guede of mistreatment, personal injury and sexual violence.
Guede, from the Ivory Coast, was released from prison for the murder of Leeds University student Ms Kercher in 2021, after having served about 13 years of a 16-year sentence.
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Since last year – when this investigation was still ongoing – Guede has been under a “special surveillance” regime, Sky News understands, meaning he was banned from having any contact with the woman behind the sexual assault allegations, including via social media, and had to inform police any time he left his city of residence, Viterbo, as ruled by a Rome court.
Guede has been serving a restraining order and fitted with an electronic ankle tag.
The Kercher murder case, in the university city of Perugia, was the subject of international attention.
Ms Kercher, a 21-year-old British exchange student, was found murdered in the flat she shared with her American roommate, Amanda Knox.
The Briton’s throat had been cut and she had been stabbed 47 times.
(L-R) Raffaele Sollecito, Meredith Kercher and Amanda Knox. File pic: AP
Ms Knox and her then-boyfriend, Raffaele Sollecito, were placed under suspicion.
Both were initially convicted of murder, but Italy’s highest court overturned their convictions, acquitting them in 2015.
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