How Britain and Europe scuppered another chance for peace in Ukraine - Patrick Mercer

Well, as a result of yet another ‘peace conference’ in London in December, the US ‘28 Point’ plan has been decisively rejected by President Zelensky once he’d been revved up by his European supporters.

The points that should concern every Briton deeply are exactly why our country is involved in this distant war and how we’ve manoeuvred ourselves to be its loudest cheerleader? You see, Britain and the Europeans have form on this: every time peace gets close, it’s their intervention which drags Mr Zelensky back from the brink of harmony.

Russia, of course, has long focussed on this country as the most bitter of her enemies. At least since the Light Brigade skewered itself on Russian guns in 1854 there’s been tension between our two nations.

It could be argued that the latest confrontation between Russia and Britain happened long before the current nastiness began in earnest. Remember how shots were fired at a Nato warship that got too close to the Russian coast in June 2021? Well, that was HMS Defender contradicting her name and being thoroughly offensive.

Then look at the sinking of the cruiser Moskva early in the war: she was hit by guided weapons made in the UK. Think of Britain being the first country to allow the cruise missiles she provided to be fired deep into Russia. Then there was the highly sophisticated drone attack on Russian nuclear bombers, Operation Spidersweb: it was an open secret that MI6’s fingerprints and our special forces’ expertise were all over it.

All of this is deniable, of course, but what about this: before Christmas LCpl Hooley died in a ‘tragic accident’ in Ukraine. He wasn’t a merc or a volunteer, the defence secretary made no bones about it: he announced that he was "devastated by the death of a UK service person in Ukraine".

Why? How? What on earth are our uniformed troops doing on Ukrainian soil? It would be naive to think that we don’t have a sprinkling of our meagre forces secretly there, but such insouciance suggests that Downing Street’s trying to get us used to the idea of ‘boots on the ground’.

It isn’t just our troops who are directly involved either. It’ll be a very long time before the full truth is known, but it does seem that it was PM Boris Johnson’s direct intervention in March 2022 which prevented Mr Zelensky from signing a ceasefire with Russia. And this always seems to be the case: the guns are all set to stop barking and then the Brits or the Euros encourage them to carry on.

Now during one recent set of talks or another, Mr Trump was accused of parroting Moscow’s line when he told President Zelensky that if he refused the latest peace offer the next one would be even less palatable.

Following that, it’s worth noting the words of Gen Zaluzhny, Ukraine’s former commander in chief and now ambassador to the UK. He said: “With each new round of negotiations, the conditions for Ukraine are worsening.”

The General’s had enormous experience of bitter fighting and he’s in a better position to assess Kiev’s chances than any hawkish journo or government lackey. Now he must be thinking about the ground that would have been preserved and the lives that should have been saved had a treaty been signed just a few weeks after the war began.

Russia, of course, returns our dislike in full measure. Not only is she carrying out all manner of covert and cyber attacks against our communications and cables, our airports and supermarkets, she blames Blighty for every reversal whilst pleading her own innocence.

For example, the Kremlin’s foreign affairs spokesman spat a classic response to the Skripal scandal recently. She called Britain’s version of events “tasteless tales from the English crypt”.

Britain must know, though, that our jingoism is dangerous. And if you think that Russia is all mouth and trousers, have a brief conversation with any Ukrainian infantryman - he’ll soon disabuse you.

Part of it, of course, is that the UK cannot get meaningfully involved in bloodshed because we’ve pretty well disarmed ourselves. In some ways, though, that makes playing a latter day Great Game all the more tempting because spooks and cyber swordsmen can pick at Russia’s scabs without the government having to commit to a tangible sign of real power - because we’re toothless.

Also, there’s no doubt that first Johnson and now Starmer see an opportunity for Britain to lead a subset of Nato/EU. Poland, the Baltic States and sometimes others seem happy enough to rally behind our premiers as they channel Churchill. The beauty for the PM, of course, is that he’s got vanishingly few fighting men to put in jeopardy.

Perhaps the simplest explanation, though, is that a threat from Ivan can soon be trumped up.

Then it’ll be Glen Miller, white cliffs, powdered egg, curfews and ration books; we’ll all be too busy playing Captain Maiwaring to notice what a terrible state our politicians have got us into.

Patrick Mercer is a former MP for Newark and Army colonel.