Putin’s Invasion of Ukraine Exposed the UK's Selective Support

Thursday the 24th of February marked the day that Russia invaded Ukraine, as well as the day the UK government’s damaging selective support was exposed. With the invasion, came a heartbreaking humanitarian crisis, as millions of people were in need of immediate aid. This new and sudden pressure bought to light the high levels of discrimination that flow through British politics.

Britain’s selectivity and to extent favouritism can be broken down into two:

1. Selective support based on your ethnicity

2. Selective support based on how rich you are

Now let's break these down, starting with number one. Although the crisis in Ukraine is tragic, and deserves our utmost support, for years now wars deadly wars have been taking place across the Middle East, as well as Africa, and the most we have done is shown solidarity in the form of a social media post.

Why does the UK government not provide adequate aid to countries like Yemen or Palestine? Why does it not give them the same energy it has shown Ukraine? That’s because we play a direct role in perpetuating violence across these nations. Britain is one of the top suppliers of arms to Saudi Arabia, the very ones being used against the people of Yemen.

Since November 2020, the region of Tigray has experienced mass conflict, which has resulted in a mass humanitarian crisis across Ethiopia. This civil war has displaced thousands and put even more people in need of aid. Ethiopia is the UK’s largest bilateral aid programme, and as a nation, we have continuously vouched for our support. Thus you would expect the UK to be at the forefront of supplying the nation with support, yet instead, I’m sure if I hadn’t mentioned the crisis in this article, many of you would have never heard of it.

That’s because the establishment media does a very good job at pushing only the news, in this instance wars, that the UK government is willing to ‘help’. I say ‘help’ because even the support, we do offer is selective and often backhanded.

Wars like Afghanistan, and Iraq are ones were familiar with, wars that aren’t buried by the mainstream media outlets. Although these wars are not hidden from us, our involvement in them is often diminished, while the humanitarian impact these wars have is censored. As we may have seen the media’s response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine was immediate and very emotionally driven, the emotion behind the reports was so strong that it evoked empathy amongst readers and viewers alike. This newly found sense of empathy triggered a quickly accumulating sense of solidarity, which is how we saw so much money, supplies and more be gathered for the people of Ukraine in such a short period of time.

Unfortunately, wars occurring in the Middle East or frankly any predominantly non-white continent of the world do not have the same privilege. Although the UK government and the media love to reinforce the idea that we are a force of good when it comes to offering humanitarian aid, when compared to other western nations we fall far behind.

After US and UK troops were pulled from Afghanistan, within a matter of days the Taliban were able to take over. You would think that after 20 years of foreign interference, two of the most respected powers in the world, the UK and US would have made more of an impact on destabilising the Taliban. Once the Taliban together, an influx of refugees from the Middle East emerged, with promises from the government to help rehome thousands. It wasn’t until January 2022, when the Afghan Citizens' Resettlement Scheme (ACRS) launched to help around 20,000 people resettle in the next few years, so far not even 500 have been helped. Yet within just days, we were able to take in hundreds of Ukrainian refugees. Only difference? Religion or skin colour, you choose.

But even the help we provided to the people of Ukraine was selective and determined by money.

While surrounding nations took in hundreds of thousands of refugees fleeing the war in Ukraine, the UK government got stuck on making sure people fleeing war-ridden countries had the correct visa. Because a visa is the first thing in everyone's mind in a time of crisis.

If Boris Johnson’s anti-immigration approach to asylum seekers wasn’t bad enough. His sanctions against Russia failed to match up with those imposed by others, and the reason for that is very simple, Russian money flows through the UK like water. A calculation by the Labour party based on Electoral Commission information estimated that Russian donors had given £1.93m to either the Tory party or constituency associations since Johnson became prime minister. Labour is also complicit in receiving donations with links to Putin, but that’s another story.

Russian money exists within British society more commonly than the ruling party, take Roman Abramovich, a billionaire Russian oligarch and politician, who is also the owner of Chelsea Football Club.

Although Johnson did finally make the right decision to sanction Russian oligarchs and make the move away from Russian oil, it took days of severe backlash on social media for him to do what was right. Even then, did he do the right thing? Or did he simply impose a series of half-hearted sanctions filled with loopholes to benefit his rich Russian friends? As the Canary reported, “Labour has accused the government of giving Russian oligarchs a “get out of London free” card by still allowing them six months to register foreign-owned UK property under new plans.”

Humanitarian aid should not be subjective or selective, it should be universal and neutral. However, it seems as though the UK not only continues to be driven by money but also operates in a discriminatory and ultimately racist manner.