UK Foreign Secretary Liz Truss has said that she supports British citizens going to Ukraine in order to take up arms against Russia.
In an interview Truss said that she absolutely supports any Brits who make the journey to Ukraine in order to volunteer to join the war against Russia.
She also warned the conflict ‘could last for years and be very, very bloody’
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has promised to arm foreign volunteers to travel to his country to join the battle against Putin’s forces.Breitbart reports: During an interview with the BBC, Truss said that she “absolutely” supports British citizens travelling to fight.
“The people of Ukraine are fighting for freedom and democracy, not just for Ukraine but for the whole of Europe because that is what President Putin is challenging,” the Foreign Secretary told the programme. “And absolutely, if people want to support that struggle, I would support them in doing that.”
Asked to clarify whether she really meant that she supports British people travelling abroad to fight Russia, Truss doubled down.
“Absolutely if that’s what they want to do,” she confirmed.Truss also put great emphasis on how Britain and her allies were sending so-called “defensive weapons” to Ukraine in order to help tackle Russian forces, with the Foreign Secretary describing the conflict as “Putin’s war”.
“This is pre-fabricated, pre-ordained aggression to try and subvert a sovereign democracy and we simply cannot allow him to succeed,” Truss asserted, while also saying that she feared the Ukraine crisis would turn into a “bloody and long-running conflict”.
The British government has previously punished citizens who have travelled to foreign conflict zones to fight
Despite Truss’ support for Britons looking to fight what she called the Russian “war machine”, however, the British state has previously come down hard on nationals who travelled to conflict zones in the past.
One Briton who travelled to Syria in order to fight against the Islamic State was convicted in a British court for attending a place used for terrorist training, for example, being sentenced to a four-year prison term.
This is despite the fact that the fighter joined a group seen as a central Western ally in the conflict.