Wes Streeting urged the US to stand by Ukraine on his visit to the American capital and sought to cool tensions between the two countries in the wake of the Starlink row that is threatening to set back Kyiv’s war effort.
The British defence secretary, giving a speech before a meeting with his US counterpart, Pete Hegseth, argued that supporting Ukraine was in the long-term interests of Washington, and a business opportunity.
Taking questions after his address, Streeting acknowledged “the challenges of recent days”, a reference to the row over the sudden decision of the US government on Monday to limit the use of Starlink by Ukraine’s military.
He said it was “a reminder of two things – one is that American support in Ukraine has been significant and it has made, I think, a real impact in the Ukrainian war effort. And we and the Ukrainians would feel the absence of that.”
The second was that there was “an enormous opportunity for the US in terms of the support for Ukraine”, a reference to the future “defence-industrial relationship” between the countries.
Streeting was speaking at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a US thinktank, before a potentially difficult meeting with Hegseth amid tensions over Ukraine, Iran and the Middle East.
The two men were also expected to discuss the safety of US military bases in the UK, after an Iranian threat prompted the US to withdraw B-1 bombers from RAF Fairford in Gloucestershire, and whether the two countries would come together to help Saudi Arabia, which has come under attack from Yemen’s Houthis.
But it is Ukraine that is the most urgent issue. A day ago, Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, said he felt personally betrayed by Donald Trump after the US government appeared to have throttled a version of the Starlink satellite internet service used by Ukraine’s military.
Ukrainian officials have reported that the US has also threatened to cut the sharing of intelligence used by Ukraine to detect incoming missiles if it does not abandon its attacks on refineries, aimed at hurting the Russian economy.
The British prime minister, Andy Burnham, meeting Zelenskyy in London on Wednesday, said the UK would stand by Ukraine.
Streeting said: “There’s rarely been a more important time for Britain and America to come together.”
Developing the theme, he made a direct appeal to the US audience. “The people of Ukraine are fighting for a principle that runs through the finest traditions of American political thought,” he said, which was “that a free people have a right to determine their own destiny”.
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Trump has vacillated over supporting Ukraine against Russia since returning to the White House, while support among US Republicans for Kyiv has been mixed. But Streeting argued that helping Ukraine was also a matter of national self-interest for the US as well as the UK.
“Ukraine may be thousands of miles from American shores, but if aggression is rewarded, if borders can be redrawn by force, if the sovereignty of nations becomes negotiable, the consequences will not remain confined to Ukraine or to my continent,” he said.
The change to Starlink happened without warning at about 1am, when Ukrainian soldiers reported that terminals on drones were no longer working at speeds greater than 100mph, rendering communications inoperable.
It led to a dramatic halt to mid-strike drone attacks on targets in Russian occupied territories on the frontline, and concerns about Ukraine’s ability to intercept new Russian jet-powered attack craft that are bombing its cities.
Trump has been trying to put pressure on Ukraine to halt its bombing of Russian oil refineries in a desperate attempt to reduce world oil prices before the US midterm elections. He agreed to buy diesel from Russia earlier this month.
