New Delhi: UK Foreign Secretary and Prime Minister candidate Liz Truss claimed that she is not ready for the UK to be openly involved in the conflict in Ukraine and does not consider it appropriate to send the Royal Navy to the Black Sea to escort the grain ships.
“I am not prepared for the UK to become directly involved in the conflict. We have done as much as we can. We were the first country to send weapons to the Ukraine,” she said during televise debates, organized by the media.
She pointed out that, while the UK provides naval insurance services for Ukrainian grain transport, Ukraine is not a NATO member state, so she considers it inappropriate to directly engage British forces or resources.
Meanwhile, her rival, ex-Chancellor of the Exchequer Rishi Sunak, also avoided answering this question, stating that London will continue supporting Kyiv “regardless of who becomes the Prime Minister.”
Sunak noted that it is necessary to declare China a threat to the UK’s national and economic security, noting that the kingdom must defend itself from what he called Beijing’s attempts to infiltrate British companies and steal their technologies. In response, Truss pointed out that Sunak called for closer ties with China just one month ago. She claimed that the UK must not fall into strategic dependence on Beijing and added that a harsher position towards Beijing is also necessary because Beijing “effectively supports Russia” over the situation in Ukraine.
(Vinayak)