Money being sent for Ukraine war effort should be spent on the NHS - GP Taylor

Behind every conflict, there is the quest for money and advantage. Weapons companies make billions and businesses look for contracts to rebuild the damaged cities when the fighting stops.

The war in the Ukraine is a giant cash cow. Some people are growing very rich from the lives sacrificed.

Doubtless, there will be bankers and big businesses who will be making a vast profit from this war. It is obvious they care little for the lives lost and the human tragedy that faces the world. Billionaires have no concern that the war in Ukraine has put up the price of fuel in Britain and people are going cold and hungry.

Power suppliers charge outrageous amounts and make vast profits, even though the price of wholesale gas has fallen to below prewar levels.

Why do we have a gas shortage when under 10 per cent of our gas came from Russia?

We are all being fleeced and are told to go cold to defeat Putin. Yet, I am meeting more and more people who now do not care who wins and cannot understand why billions of pounds are being given to Zelensky, a man with offshore bank accounts and a large property portfolio.

It is outrageous that we in Britain are keeping a regime afloat that shuts down and bans all the opposition parties and tries to control the press.

In his nightly address, Zelensky said that he wanted a law that would “make it impossible for religious organisations affiliated to the Russian Federation to operate in Ukraine”, referring to the Ukrainian Orthodox Church.

Ukraine is well known for being one of the most corrupt countries in Europe. Can we be sure that all the money flowing into their coffers from the West is going to the right places? Instead of giving them guns and missiles, why don’t we send them medical and social aid?

It is obvious to many that this conflict is a proxy war fought on behalf of the West against Russia to destabilise Putin and bankrupt the country. Zelensky is being paid to fight on our behalf. Britain, America, France, and Germany have pushed and pushed Russia into a corner. There can be no doubt that NATO has advanced further east threatening Russia and there has been little political will to stop seeing the Kremlin as an enemy.

This is a war that Britain should not be fighting. There will be no peace until both sides can no longer afford to fight. Britain should turn off the tap now and give the money to nurses, the low paid and energy poor in this country.

The £2.4bn given to Ukraine in 2022 could have been well spent on the NHS, transport, and education.

After all, we are being constantly reminded to tighten our belts and that the pandemic must be paid for. Rishi has promised to at least match the £2.4bn in 2023. That is an amount we just cannot afford, especially when there are 7.2 million people on NHS waiting lists.

Britain is the second highest giver of money to Ukraine and has trained 27,000 members of the Ukrainian Armed Forces since 2015. In the last year the UK provided hundreds of rockets, five air defence systems, 120 armoured vehicles and over 200,000 pieces of non-lethal military equipment.

In September 2022, the largest commercial road move of ammunition since the Second World War took place, as tens of thousands more rounds of UK-donated artillery ammunition went to the front lines in Ukraine.

It is no wonder then, that Putin thinks we are at war with Russia. Britain provides the bullets and gets someone else to fire them and probably die doing it.

In our modern society there is no room for war. Britain is not an international police force sorting out other people’s troubles.

It is a financial catastrophe that we are giving away British tax money on a war when the outcome will not have many negative consequences for Britain.

It is blatantly obvious that Russia does not have the capacity or the will to advance further west. The Russian people are just as sick of the war as a growing number of voters here are.

Now is the time for Rishi to turn off the tap and get all sides around the negotiating table to work out an enduring peace, regardless of what the World Economic Forum and war hungry American billionaires think.

GP Taylor is a writer and broadcaster who lives in Yorkshire.