UK pledges £17m to repair Chornobyl drone damage as US support for Ukraine wavers

Britain will spend £17 million repairing the Chornobyl nuclear power plant's protective shelter and ventilation systems — damaged by a Russian drone strike last year — in a funding announcement timed to coincide with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy's visit to Downing Street and made against a backdrop of deepening uncertainty about American support for Kyiv.

The money forms part of an international package coordinated by the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, working alongside Ukraine and G7 donors. The UK government cautioned that, without the repairs, corrosion could erode decades of international investment and pose lasting environmental and safety hazards.

Our message to Putin is clear – we stand shoulder to shoulder with Ukraine and will do so until they prevail. Working with our allies, we are strengthening Ukraine's security, raising the cost of Russia's aggression and working towards a just and lasting peace.— Ed Miliband, Foreign Secretary

As the full-scale invasion of Ukraine by Putin continues, our commitment to the Ukrainian people is unshakeable. We are curtailing the war chest funding Putin so desperately wants and backing the reconstruction of Ukraine that has suffered at the hands of his barbaric attacks.— John Healey, Chancellor of the Exchequer

Andy Burnham told Zelenskyy that the UK was "behind you and that will not change," according to Yahoo News — a message that carried particular weight given what has emerged about Ukraine's military situation in recent days.

Ukraine's access to Elon Musk's Starlink satellite network has been throttled in key areas, according to Yahoo News, in effect rendering most of the drones used to strike behind front lines inoperable and reducing its air defences. Shares in European satellite operator Eutelsat soared on the news, fuelled by investor bets that European providers could fill the gap — but experts cautioned that no ready-made alternative exists. Christian Freiherr von der Ropp, an independent satellite consultant, told Yahoo News that Eutelsat's OneWeb network was poorly suited to wartime conditions and that switching to it would mean replacing thousands of Starlink terminals.

European defence commissioner Andrius Kubilius acknowledged the continent's vulnerability at a conference in Brussels, saying it was "quite dependent on American space capabilities" and that the answer was to "develop our own capabilities."

The strains extend beyond technology. According to the Financial Times, the US put forward a proposal under which European countries would unfreeze certain Russian sovereign assets and hand them to a Washington-overseen vehicle as a way of breathing new life into peace talks. European delegates reportedly rebuffed the plan, which was put forward by US special envoy Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, according to Yahoo News.

The security picture on the ground remains severe. According to the UK government, Russia launched upwards of 200 strikes against Ukrainian electricity infrastructure and an additional 17 against oil and gas facilities between October 5 and 11 — among them six energy attacks that came after President Trump announced a ceasefire on Sunday. On October 13, Russia fired 39 ballistic missiles at Ukraine in one of the largest such attacks on record, much of it aimed at energy infrastructure, leaving 600,000 civilians without power.

Retired four-star US general Curtis Scaparrotti, who served as NATO's supreme allied commander Europe from 2016 to 2019, made the case that the alliance is already effectively at war with Russia. "If you looked at it from their spectrum, we're at war with Russia today, within the alliance, because they're taking actions that are intended to undermine individual countries' capability to support warfare, undermine their civilians' confidence in their own government or within NATO, and to break NATO," he said in Washington, according to Yahoo News.

Political headwinds within Europe added to the picture of fragile consensus. Marine Le Pen of France, whom current polling puts on track to win next year's presidential election, said the country cannot go on funding Ukraine given the "perilous" condition of the eurozone's second-largest economy. In Germany, the Alternative for Germany party and the small leftist BSW party joined forces to pass a symbolic motion in the Saxony-Anhalt state parliament urging Berlin to end its military support for Ukraine — a vote that carries no practical weight, since state parliaments play no part in setting foreign policy.

The UK has been involved in Chornobyl nuclear safety for years. Britain was among the founding donors of the International Chornobyl Cooperation Account when it was established in 2020, and its contributions to that fund total €8 million, placing it third among individual donors behind Norway and France, according to the UK government. Britain has provided almost £25 billion in total support to Ukraine since the full-scale invasion, including over £770 million in energy funding, and has sanctioned more than 3,500 individuals, entities and ships under its Russia sanctions regime.

Why it matters — The Chornobyl pledge and Zelenskyy's London visit signal that European allies are stepping up material and symbolic support for Ukraine at the moment US backing — from satellite access to peace-talk strategy — looks most uncertain.

Reported by gov.uk, reuters.com, uk.news.yahoo.com, nytimes.com