UK to provide £3 bn a year support to Ukraine for 'as long as it takes', finance minister says in budget speech

The United Kingdom’s Chancellor of the Exchequer, Rachel Reeves, on Wednesday (October 30) promised an annual 3 billion-pound support for Ukraine would continue for “as long as it takes”.

In her first budget speech, Reeves, the first woman finance minister of the country, said that the promise to maintain the annual military support to Ukraine came on top of a 2.26 billion pound loan.

That loan was provided as part of the G7’s Extraordinary Revenue Acceleration agreement to aid the country in its war against Russia. It was announced just last week.

The announcement comes just hours after Russia accused Britain of using a Black Sea grain corridor to deliver arms to Ukraine. That came alongside Moscow denying London’s claims that Russian attacks on Ukrainian ports had disrupted crucial grain supplies for other countries.

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Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said on Wednesday that “Such baseless yet thunderous outrage from London once again confirms just the opposite: the direct involvement of the UK in supplying arms to the Kiev regime using the Black Sea sea corridor.”

Ukraine created a shipping corridor in the Black Sea after a UN-backed Black Sea grain export initiative that involved Russia and had ensured the safe passage of grain ships collapsed back in 2023.

Bolstering defence spending

Reeves also said that she would provide the defence ministry with an additional 2.9 billion pounds next year. The former Bank of England economist said the extra spending would take Britain towards its goal of allocating 2.5 per cent of its gross domestic product (GDP) towards defence.

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That would ensure the country meets the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation’s (Nato) requirement that member countries allocate at least 2 per cent of their GDP towards defence spending.

Recently, that 2 per cent target has come into focus due to former US President Donald Trump (who is also in the race for the White House this year) saying that he had told allies he would “encourage” Russia to attack any Nato member nation that did not meet the spending criteria.
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With inputs from Reuters_