The UK and Europe may need to offer security guarantees to Ukraine in the event of a deal with Russia, regardless of US support, the former head of the armed forces has said.
Retired General Sir Nick Carter said he believed it was for Ukraine to decide “what it sees as a fair settlement”, but that the UK and European countries “need to step up to the plate” when it comes to guaranteeing Ukraine’s sovereignty.
He told BBC One’s Question Time special that “if the Americans are not prepared to do that then some others are going to have to step up to the plate”.
Earlier this week, Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer said a “US security guarantee was the only way to effectively deter Russia”.
He said the UK was willing to provide peacekeeping troops if necessary, but a US “backstop” would be needed.
Sir Keir did not explain what he meant by this but others have suggested it could involve air support, logistics and intelligence capabilities.
It comes as a rift between Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and Trump, who has said the US would soon begin direct negotiations with Russia, appeared to deepen in recent days.
The US president called Zelensky a “dictator” and suggested Ukraine was responsible for the full-scale Russian invasion in February 2022 and that a peace deal could have been struck earlier.
The Ukrainian leader said the US president was “living in a disinformation space” created by Moscow.
Meanwhile, Washington has also suggested Europe needs to take greater responsibility for its own defence.
Sir Nick, the former chief of the defence staff – who held the role between 2018 and 2021 – told the special Question Time programme he thought the UK and other European allies “have got to state a position”.
“I think that fundamentally there has got to be some form of guarantee of Ukraine’s sovereignty in the future,” he said, adding “there has got to be a copper-bottom guarantee”.
Sir Nick also warned the UK armed forces are “remarkably hollow” after a “process of neglect over a 30-year period”.
“I think we also need to be clear about how vulnerable our country is,” he said, describing how much of the UK’s critical infrastructure is dependent on undersea cables or not “not properly protected by cyber defences”.
He said: “We are in a position I think where we are massively vulnerable at the moment. And whether we like it or not that means we’re going to have to start protecting ourselves.
“And the sort of onslaught that Ukraine has suffered from the air via drones and missiles over the course of the last three years is unsustainable as far as the UK’s concerned.
“We might be able to park a destroyer in the Thames to protect parts of London but nothing more than that.”
Thursday’s Question Time panel included Sir Nick; Ukrainian MP Lesia Vasylenko, a member of the liberal, pro-European opposition Holos party; Jan Halper-Hayes, who has served as a campaign adviser to Trump; Cabinet Office minister Nick Thomas-Symonds; and Conservative former defence secretary Sir Ben Wallace.
