UK Foreign Secretary Lord Cameron has ruled out Western troops being sent into Ukraine in favor of extracting more financial support from U.S. Congress.
The former prime minister acknowledged the “war will be lost if the allies don’t step up” on the BBC’s Ukrainecast podcast.
But asked whether Western nations should send troops into Ukraine, Lord Cameron replied “no” before adding NATO must be in the “best possible shape” by the U.S. November elections and extracting more U.S. taxpayer dollars will help both NATO and Kyiv.
He added any “boots on the ground” as delivering Russian President Vladimir Putin “a target.”
Lord Cameron was speaking at a two-day North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) summit of 32 foreign ministers in Brussels.
The Heritage Foundation found that the United States’ current $113 billion in aid to Ukraine costs $900 per American household. https://t.co/2vSx0ExVAN
— Breitbart News (@BreitbartNews) August 12, 2023
He said he’d be making his second visit to the United States since becoming foreign secretary next week and would be urging Congress to give more financial support, which “could change the narrative” in Ukraine. The BBC reports he told Ukrainecast:
If we can get that money out of the U.S. Congress, if we can get Ukraine the arms they need, if we can show Putin that he can’t outwait us and that Ukraine is going to fight back and win back more of its territory.
If we can do all those things, whoever gets in in November, we’ll look at the situation in Ukraine and… look at more and more NATO members spending two percent of their GDP on defence and say, this is a success story. I want to invest in this success.
So turn Ukraine in the situation and NATO into the strongest possible alliance with the strongest possible prospect of success. And whoever wins in November 2024 would inherit a better situation.
Asked about fears the war could still spill over the Ukrainian border, particularly in Poland and the Baltics, Lord Cameron gave assurances NATO would intervene in those circumstances, under the organisation’s Article 5 pledge that “an attack on one is an attack on all”.
But he ruled out Western “boots on the ground” in Ukraine itself, saying: “We don’t want to give Putin a target like that.”
The Joe Biden administration and the U.S. Congress have directed about $75 billion in assistance to Ukraine since the war began.
That includes humanitarian, financial, and military support, according to the Kiel Institute for the World Economy, a German research institute.
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