Wes Streeting urges US to back Ukraine on Washington visit
UK Defence Secretary Wes Streeting has urged the United States to maintain its support for Ukraine during a visit to Washington, after a row over the Starlink satellite system raised fresh tensions between the allies. Streeting said he was “reassured directly” by his US counterpart Pete Hegseth that Starlink access had been restored for Ukrainian forces. He made the comments after a speech at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a US thinktank.
Cooling tensions
Streeting acknowledged “the challenges of recent days” but sought to cool UK-US tensions. He said supporting Ukraine was in the long-term interests of Washington and a business opportunity. But he also noted that American support had been significant and made a real impact. “We and the Ukrainians would feel the absence of that,” he said.
Still, Streeting stressed there was an “enormous opportunity for the US” in terms of support for Ukraine. He pointed to a future “defence-industrial relationship” between the two countries. The visit came after the US government on Monday limited Ukraine’s military use of Starlink. The change happened without warning at about 1am, and Ukrainian soldiers reported terminals on drones no longer working at speeds greater than 100mph, rendering communications inoperable.
Ukraine most urgent
Streeting said it was not yet clear to the UK why the disruption occurred. “This is not the first time we’ve seen a falling out between Washington and Kyiv,” he added. The most urgent issue on the agenda was Ukraine. A day earlier, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said he felt personally betrayed by Donald Trump. The US government appeared to have throttled a version of Starlink used by Ukraine’s military.
Ukrainian officials said the US threatened to cut intelligence sharing used to detect incoming missiles if Ukraine did not abandon attacks on refineries. Those attacks are aimed at hurting the Russian economy. But Streeting insisted helping Ukraine was a matter of national self-interest for both the US and 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.
Standing by Ukraine
UK Prime Minister Andy Burnham met Zelenskyy in London on Wednesday. Burnham said the UK would stand by Ukraine. Streeting echoed that message. “There’s rarely been a more important time for Britain and America to come together,” he said. He also framed the fight in American terms. “The people of Ukraine are fighting for a principle that runs through the finest traditions of American political thought” — “that a free people have a right to determine their own destiny.”
Trump has vacillated over supporting Ukraine since returning to the White House, and support among US Republicans for Kyiv is mixed. Streeting’s visit also touched on the safety of US military bases in the UK, after an Iranian threat prompted the withdrawal of B-1 bombers from RAF Fairford in Gloucestershire. Discussions were expected on whether the US and UK should help Saudi Arabia, which is under attack from Yemen’s Houthis. But Ukraine remained the central focus.
