{"id":803135,"date":"2026-10-15T06:54:13","date_gmt":"2026-10-15T06:54:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/803135\/"},"modified":"2026-10-15T06:54:13","modified_gmt":"2026-10-15T06:54:13","slug":"ukraine-war-briefing-uk-pledges-17m-to-repair-chornobyl-attack-damage-amid-fears-of-slipping-us-support-ukraine","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/803135\/","title":{"rendered":"Ukraine war briefing: UK pledges \u00a317m to repair Chornobyl attack damage amid fears of slipping US support | Ukraine"},"content":{"rendered":"

Britain will provide \u00a317m ($23m) to fund critical repairs to the Chornobyl power plant hit by a Russian drone attack, as Andy Burnham seeks to bolster support for Ukraine amid doubts about long-term US commitment. The UK will help restore its protective shelter and ventilation, which were damaged by an attack last year<\/a>, amid concerns that corrosion could create longer-term environmental and safety risks, the chancellor and foreign secretary announced on Thursday. The pledge comes after Burnham hosted Volodymyr Zelenskyy in Downing Street, where he told the Ukrainian president the UK was \u201cbehind you and that will not change\u201d.<\/p>\n

The meeting came during a period of strained relations between Kyiv and Washington after it emerged that Ukraine\u2019s military has had its access to Elon Musk\u2019s Starlink technology throttled<\/a> in key areas, in effect rendering most of the drones used to strike behind the frontlines inoperable and reducing its air defences.<\/p>\n

Russia is already at war with Nato, a former top commander of the military alliance has said. Retired four-star general Curtis Scaparrotti, who served as Nato\u2019s supreme allied commander Europe from 2016 to 2019, warned there was a long-term plan behind the Kremlin\u2019s \u201cspurious activities\u201d against member countries and stressed the need to protect critical facilities. \u201cIf you looked at it from their spectrum, we\u2019re at war with Russia today, within the alliance, because they\u2019re taking actions that are intended to undermine individual countries\u2019 capability to support warfare, undermine their civilians\u2019 confidence in their own government or within Nato, and to break Nato,\u201d he said in Washington.<\/p>\n

The US proposed European countries \u2060unfreeze some \u2060Russian \u200bsovereign assets and transfer them to \u2060a vehicle overseen \u200bby \u200cWashington in \u200can attempt to \u200crevive peace talks, the Financial Times reported on Wednesday. European delegates reportedly rebuffed the plan from US special envoy Steve Witkoff \u2060and Donald \u200bTrump\u2019s son-in-law \u200bJared Kushner.<\/p>\n

Questions over the future of support in Europe for Ukraine were highlighted on Wednesday by surging far-right parties. France\u2019s Marine Le \u2060Pen, who on current polling is predicted to win next \u200byear\u2019s presidential \u200cvote, said Paris \u2060cannot keep financing Ukraine due \u2060to the \u201cperilous\u201d \u2060state \u200bof the euro zone\u2019s second-biggest \u2060economy. Germany\u2019s far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) and the small leftist BSW party joined forces on \u2060Wednesday to pass \u2060a symbolic motion \u200bin the state parliament of Saxony-Anhalt calling for an end to Berlin\u2019s military support for Ukraine. The motion has no practical effect, because state parliaments have no role in foreign \u200cpolicy.<\/p>\n

Shares in European satellite operator Eutelsat have soared following news of Ukraine\u2019s difficulties with Starlink technology, fuelled by investor bets that European providers could benefit from growing strains between Washington and Kyiv. But experts say Europe does not have a ready-made alternative that Ukrainian soldiers could attach to their drones. Christian Freiherr von der Ropp, an \u200cindependent satellite consultant, said Eutelsat\u2019s OneWeb network was not well suited to wartime use and would require the replacement of thousands of Starlink terminals. European defence commissioner \u200bAndrius Kubilius said at a conference in Brussels on Wednesday that the continent was quite dependent on American space capabilities. \u201cThe answer to that situation is to develop our own capabilities,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Britain will provide \u00a317m ($23m) to fund critical repairs to the Chornobyl power plant hit by a Russian…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":803136,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[59,57,58,50,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-803135","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-kingdom","tag-gb","tag-great-britain","tag-greatbritain","tag-news","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/803135","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=803135"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/803135\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/803136"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=803135"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=803135"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=803135"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}