Charge of the Light Brigade II? UK May Send 600 Troops to Ukraine Amid Russia Invasion Fearmongering

UK Chief of Defence Staff Nick Carter warned Saturday that there is a greater risk of an accidental war between the West and Russia today that at any other time in his 44-year military career. The officer made the remarks amid claims by US officials and media that Russia is poised for an invasion of Ukraine. Moscow has denied the allegations.

Britain could deploy up to 600 elite Special Air Service (SAS), Parachute Regiment troops and support forces to Ukraine, The Mirror reports, citing a source said to be familiar with the preparations.

“The high readiness element of the brigade was told it may need to deploy at very short notice. Between 400 and 600 troops are ready. Their equipment is packed and they are ready to fly to Ukraine and either land or parachute in. They have trained for both eventualities,” the anonymous source said.

Plans for the possible deployment were drawn up following apparent warnings by Britain’s defence establishment and MI6 warning of a supposed ‘clear and present danger’ posed by Russia to Ukraine – an aspiring NATO partner.

Two thirds of the British force is said to consist of paratroopers from the 16 Air Assault Brigade, ordinarily based in Aldershot, southern England. Along with SAS and paratroops, the unit is also said to include medics, engineers, signallers and other support staff.

It’s not clear exactly where in Ukraine British troops would be sent, or what their purpose could be. The UK and its NATO allies have already rotated deployments of hundreds of troops in and out of western Ukraine in recent years to train troops, and to parade through the streets of Kiev, Ukraine’s capital, in a show of force to Moscow. NATO has also provided the country with billions of dollars in lethal weapons.

Russian officials have slammed the deployments and arms deliveries, pointing to Kiev’s ongoing military campaign against separatist forces in the country’s east, and to the danger of a further destabilisation of the situation. Ukraine was thrust into a civil war in the spring of 2014, in the aftermath of a US and EU-backed coup d’état which ousted the country’s democratically elected president and brought ultra-nationalists to power. The violence caused the deaths of over 13,000 people, with over 2.5 million forced to flee their homes, and nearly a million settling in neighbouring Russia as refugees.

Britain deployed a “small team” of army Royal Engineers to Poland’s border with Belarus this week amid tensions between Warsaw and Minsk over Middle Eastern migrants seeking to make their way into the European Union using Belarus as a transit point. Poland has built up troops, tanks, and aircraft on the border against thousands of unarmed migrants. Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko called the deployment “blackmail,” pointing to the absurdity of Poland’s alleged plans to fight “migrants with Leopard tanks.”

‘Russian Invasion’ Fears

US and UK media have spent the past two weeks accusing Russia of concentrating forces “on the border with Ukraine,” with Politico publishing satellite pictures of Russian armoured units in Smolensk region –which is over 250 km north of the Ukrainian border, as a border buildup. The claims have been echoed by the Washington Post and Foreign Policy. Moscow dismissed the reports as a coordinated fake news campaign against Russia.

On Wednesday, Pentagon spokesman John Kirby asked Russia to provide the US with more information about the supposed buildup, while Secretary of State Antony Blinken warned Moscow against making “mistakes” in Ukraine. The Russian Foreign Ministry blasted Blinken over the remarks, urging Washington to consider its own conduct in Ukraine, including its support for the illegal February 2014 coup.

On Saturday, UK Chief of Defence Staff Nick Carter warned in an interview that the risk of an accidental war between the West and Russia was greater now than at any other time in his 44-year career.

“I think the nature of the competition between states and great powers leads to greater tensions. We have to be careful that people don’t end up allowing the bellicose nature of some of our politics to end up in a position where escalation leads to miscalculation,” Carter stressed.

The ‘Ukraine invasion claims’ have been accompanied by active diplomatic efforts by Ukraine to join the NATO alliance. Russia has expressed concerns over the prospects of Ukraine becoming part of the Western bloc. Despite a commitment to Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev in 1990 not to expand eastward beyond the borders of a reunified Germany, NATO has gone on to swallow up every single former member of the Warsaw Pact alliance, plus three former Soviet republics, and four republics of the former Yugoslavia. Along with Ukraine, Georgia has also applied for membership in NATO.

Despite its claims of being a defensive alliance, NATO has spent much of the past thirty years focused on external operations, including the 1990s bombing of Yugoslavia, turning Libya into a failed state in 2011, and the 19+ year occupation of Afghanistan which ended in August with the withdrawal of Western troops and the collapse of the Afghan army and government.