UK minister urges ex-armed forces personnel not to join Ukrainian troops
A UK official has called on the country’s former military service personnel not to travel to Ukraine to fight against Russia, after Prime Minister Boris Johnson warned that soldiers would be court-martialed.
In a letter to British armed forces charities on Friday, Leo Docherty, the minister for veterans, wrote, “Veterans always step up in times of need, but they must not engage in the conflict, as they will put themselves at significant risk by entering into a conflict area.”
The minister stressed that veterans should focus on alternative activities such as helping charities instead of getting involved in direct conflict.
The letter to military charities said they could ask for help from the Office for Veterans’ Affairs and the Ministry of Defense (MoD) if they learned about veterans leaving the country to assist the Ukrainian military.
The development comes on the heels of a warning by Johnson that anyone from the UK military who has joined Ukrainian forces would be taken to a court martial on return. He added that civilians should also avoid travelling to Ukraine.
British Defense Secretary Ben Wallace has also warned veterans against joining the Ukrainian forces, saying that those traveling to the conflict zone would not be there for “a selfie and six weeks” but would be in the war “for real.”
A small number of serving British armed forces personnel have reportedly joined the Ukrainian troops, while veterans and Britons without combat experience have also traveled to Ukraine.
Speaking earlier on Thursday, the armed forces minister, James Heappey, also said that, “It is illegal for British service personnel to, first of all, go absent without leave in the first place; but to go absent without leave in order to fight in a foreign war is simply unacceptable, and frankly risks the United Kingdom being wrongly claimed by Russia to be a belligerent in this.”
The UK government has denounced the Russian offensive in Ukraine and has already imposed several sanctions against Moscow. Russian President Vladimir Putin has hit back at the Western sanctions, saying that they constitute a declaration of war.
Putin ordered a “special military operation” in Ukraine on 24 February.
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