The Times - UK (2022-06-08)

30 2GM Wednesday June 8 2022 | the times

Wo r l d

ons; they don’t have combat first aid kits

or uniforms; none of the eye or hearing

protection has arrived.”

The UK pledged this week to send

long-range missiles to Ukraine. Ben

Wallace, the defence secretary, said the

M270 multiple-launch rocket system,

which has a range of about 50 miles,

would help Ukraine defend itself

against Russia, but the UK is believed to

be sending only three M270s at first to

add to the four Himars systems prom-

ised by America. Ukraine says it needs

more than 60 such systems to defeat

the Russians.

It is a problem President Zelensky

has been talking about for weeks. “I

haven’t got a clue where any of the

western aid money is,” Robinson said.

“Every man I train, they all have mas-

sive lists of equipment they don’t have.

“It’s inspiring in many ways, their

bravery, because a third of the men I

train, who go off to the front, they won’t

be coming back. Their level of training

Russia has been accused of weaponis-
ing Ukrainian grain exports and fuel-
ling a global food crisis in a cynical at-
tempt to force the West to lift sanctions.
During heated exchanges at the UN
security council, Charles Michel, the
president of the European Council, ad-
dressed Moscow’s envoy directly: “Mr
Ambassador of the Russian Federation,
let’s be honest, the Kremlin is using
food supplies as a stealth missile against
developing countries.
“The dramatic consequences of
Russia’s war are spilling over across the
globe, and this is driving up food prices,
pushing people into poverty, and desta-

Grain is Putin’s new stealth missile, UN warned

bilising entire regions. Russia is solely

responsible for this food crisis.”

Vassily Nebenzia, the Russian am-

bassador, accused Michel of spreading

lies and left the meeting.

Ukrainian officials have accused

Russia of stealing grain worth $100 mil-

lion from occupied territory and or-

chestrating a food crisis to pressure the

West. Ukraine and Russia jointly ac-

count for a quarter of the global supply

of wheat. Prices have soared since the

invasion in February, when Russia

blockaded Ukraine’s Black Sea ports.

Russia has been dangling a guarantee

to allow Ukrainian grain safe passage if

the country’s military removes mines

from its ports. Kyiv, however, fears that

the Kremlin would then launch attacks

from the sea. Russia and Turkey, which

controls access to the Black Sea, are

holding talks on how to restart exports.

Under the plans, Turkish ships would

help de-mine the waters off Odesa and

guarantee safe passage for Ukrainian

cargo vessels through the Bosphorus.

Kyiv has not been invited to the talks

while the Kremlin has demanded sanc-

tions relief in return for easing the

blockade, which British officials have

described as blackmail. Dmytro Kule-

ba, Ukraine’s foreign minister, said that

Moscow could use such an opening to

launch an amphibious invasion.

Russia has blamed western sanctions

for blocking its grain exports, despite

those sanctions explicitly exempting

agricultural products. President Sall of

Senegal, the African Union’s leader,

visited Russia last week and echoed the

disinformation by calling for Europe to

lift sanctions to ease the food crisis.

6 Angela Merkel, the former German

chancellor, has defended her policy of

détente towards Russia while in office,

saying she had “nothing to apologise

for”. In her first significant interview

since stepping down six months ago,

she said that she had not been naive in

her dealings with President Putin. “I

don’t have to blame myself for not

trying hard enough,” she said. “I don’t

see that I have to say, ‘That was wrong’.”

Climate crisis will bring on Russia’s

downfall, Roger Boyes, page 26

No country should reward Putin by buying

stolen grain, leading article, page 29

Catherine Philp
Diplomatic Correspondent

Recruits are signing up for

glory but dying in droves

is highly inadequate, and their physical

fitness could be improved.”

The UK has committed more than

£1 billion to the Ukrainian war effort,

and Robinson conceded that money

had been spent on high-tech weapons

systems, “but our guys don’t have night-

vision goggles, rifle optics or summer

clothing. There’s zero.”

Zelensky has praised Britain and the

US for answering Kyiv’s call for help, a

point that has been leapt on by Boris

Johnson.

Robinson argued that this too was

false. “At the start of the war I gave an

interview to Fox News and lied. I said

we had support, but we didn’t. I didn’t

feel it would be in the interests of the

war effort for me to be brutally honest

and say we haven’t got the help we need.

I felt it would play into the Russians’

hands from a propaganda point of view.

“Certainly, if the Brits and Americans

are providing Nlaws and Javelins [UK

and US anti-tank missiles] and a little

bit of equipment, Zelensky will want to

keep them on side, but we have nothing,

and our guys are going to die if they go

to the front.”

Robinson’s job — for which he is not

paid — has morphed from preparing to

fight to training volunteers and begging

companies around the world for equip-

ment. His latest triumph was to secure

100 Ifax medical kits, used for battle-

field injuries, but his unit has trained at

least 4,000 soldiers. Which of them

should get the life-saving medical sup-

plies?

The shortage of equipment makes

Ukraine’s achievements all the more

remarkable. Robinson expressed

surprise: “I’ve asked myself how they

have done it every day. How is this

country winning the war when they

don’t have the tools and equipment to

win it?

“We don’t know what the Ukrainian

casualty numbers are — only recently

has President Zelensky admitted that

he is losing 60 to 100 men a day. I fear

the number is far greater.

“They’re winning because their

hearts and souls are in the right place.

Were they to get the correct kit, the

whole dynamic would change — these

guys would win back 100 per cent of the

territory they’ve lost.”

A shortage of western

kit is costing Ukranian

lives, a British

volunteer tells

Alistair Dawber

British duo

paraded by

Russians

T

wo British

men

captured by

Russia while

fighting for

Ukraine have

appeared at court in a

separatist-controlled

region (Julian

O’Shaughnessy

writes).

Aiden Aslin, 28, and

Shaun Pinner, 48,

along with Sadun

Brahim, a Moroccan,

have been charged

with being foreign

mercenaries in the

Kremlin-backed

Donetsk People’s

Republic and face the

death penalty. They

were captured in

April in Mariupol.

Aslin, from

Nottinghamshire,

holds dual British and

Ukrainian citizenship,

and his fiancée is

Ukrainian. Pinner,

from Bedfordshire,

moved to Ukraine

four years ago and his

wife is Ukrainian.

A third Briton,

Andrew Hill, whose

affiliation is unclear,

is also accused of

being a mercenary.

All three have been

shown on Russian

state TV “admitting”

to their crimes.

Vladimir Solovyov,

a presenter, appeared

to relish the prospect

of their deaths, saying

that Boris Johnson’s

popularity would

slip further when the

men were “bumped

off ”.

Aiden Aslin with Shaun Pinner at the court hearing

that, the fighting would not go the way

they wanted it to.

“At the beginning of this conflict

there were no AKs; there was no body

armour; there were no helmets —

there was nothing. So you couldn’t

send someone to the front,” said

Robinson, 39.

“It’s still nowhere near where it

needs to be, and this talk of big

support from the US, the UK

— you can have a look

around and you struggle

to see where one dollar

of it is. I don’t see

Humvees; armoured

vehicles. But also

the men we train

don’t have optics

on their weap-

Matthew

Robinson is

losing a third of

the men he trains

A third of the men Matthew Robinson
meets have only a few weeks left to live.
Robinson, a former member of the
Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engi-
neers, has been in Ukraine since the
start of the war. Attached to the Geor-
gian Legion, a unit of experienced vol-
unteers from Georgia and about 20
other countries, he has been raising
money, requesting arms and training
soldiers, mostly raw but enthusiastic
Ukrainians who have heard their coun-
try’s call to arms.
As many as 1,000 of them have died
at the front. In many cases members of
Robinson’s brave but ragtag battalion
lost their lives not because they were
outfought by the Russians but because
of what he described as a lamentable
lack of equipment, a predicament he
feared the West was not taking serious-
ly enough.
“This has become a TikTok war,” he
said. “You see the videos of expensive
western kit taking out columns of
Russian tanks, and that’s great, but
the reality is very different.”
To illustrate the point, Rob-
inson took out his phone and
showed a picture of a man
whose face had been blasted
away in the fighting. In another
video a volunteer was having
shrapnel removed from the
socket that had once held
his eye. He had been
blinded because he did
not have a pair of pro-
tective goggles on the
front line.
This version of the
war was not the one
being beamed to
smartphones in the
West, he said, but it
was the reality, and
until western gov-
ernments realised

Touch of class Pupils at a Kharkiv