The British-Ukrainian pact is based on a fantasy

However, if a settlement is to be reached and an eventual Ukrainian collapse averted, then it will also be necessary for Kyiv to make some extremely painful compromises. The risk of the rhetoric of ironclad and permanent commitment issued by Starmer is that it will reduce Volodymyr Zelensky’s willingness to make necessary concessions. The Ukrainian government, while insisting that it must be part of all talks, has also just repeated that it will not in fact negotiate directly with Vladimir Putin.

This risk is made worse by the Labour government’s record — following faithfully in the footsteps of its Tory predecessors — of encouraging the Ukrainians to believe in fantasies or outright lies. Under the latest agreement, the British commitment to Ukraine of £3 billion for the coming year is achievable. Given the state of the UK’s economy and the pressure on the budget, the statement that this is guaranteed “indefinitely” is absurd: pointless if the Ukrainians do not believe it, dangerous if they do.

Among these fantasies have been the statements that Britain would help Ukraine “win”, and that Ukrainian victory — rather than a realistically achievable peace — is remotely possible. Among the lies has been that Britain is committed to long-term Nato membership for Ukraine — when the UK and every country in the alliance have made clear that they have no intention of ever going to war to defend Zelensky’s nation.

In recent months, a new fantasy has emerged and is being widely discussed: that of a powerful European “peacekeeping force” for a postwar Ukraine, including British troops. This is an example of the total blindness to Russian views that helped bring about the collapse of relations with Moscow before the beginning of the war.

For while such a force would not be formally under Nato, since it would be composed of member states and dependent on the alliance’s command structures and logistics, it is just as unacceptable to Moscow as actual Ukrainian membership. As a result, it will be categorically rejected in the negotiations.

Equally important is that, as European governments have stated, there is no chance of such a force being deployed unless the United States gave a categorical commitment to come to its aid if it were attacked. This, to all intents and purposes, would be the equivalent of a US Article 5 guarantee to Ukraine — which Trump is determined not to give. And of course even if these issues could miraculously be solved, Britain simply does not have the troops for such an operation.

As for the British government’s description of the latest agreement as a “Historic 100-Year Partnership”, what this says about the Ukraine war is perhaps less important — and certainly less depressing — than what it says about the British elites and their incorrigible combination of post-imperial megalomania with historical illiteracy. This mixture led us into the disasters of Iraq and Afghanistan, places which our own history should have taught us to know better.

The idea that anything in international affairs can be guaranteed for a hundred years is a piece of intellectual idiocy, rooted in a mystical notion of an eternal, unchanging “West” and a Nato forever at odds with an unchanging Russia. It also ignores the probable role of climate change in upending all current strategic concerns.

Over the past 250 years, Russia has been an ally of Britain against France, an enemy in the Crimean War, an ally and enemy of Germany in the First and Second World Wars, an adversary in the Cold War, a partner against Al Qaeda, and now an adversary again. Unfortunately, though, this history has been lost on Starmer and his cabinet — and it is Britain that will pay a heavy price for it.

Anatol Lieven is a former war correspondent and Director of the Eurasia Program at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft in Washington DC.