Ukraine’s top security official has dismissed criticism of Kyiv from British defence secretary Ben Wallace, suggesting Wallace misspoke due to a surfeit of emotion.
“I wouldn’t pay too much attention to what he said,” Oleksiy Danilov, secretary of Ukraine’s security council, told the Guardian in Kyiv on Thursday. “Everyone can say something when they are emotional and then regret it … I know for sure this isn’t his actual position.”
Wallace criticised Ukraine on Wednesday for treating western allies “like Amazon”, providing lists of weapons it required and for not being thankful enough for western military aid. “Whether we like it or not, people want to see a bit of gratitude,” said Wallace.
The remarks caused surprise and confusion in Kyiv, as they appeared to jar with most British government statements offering unequivocal support for Ukraine, and Wallace had widely been seen as one of Kyiv’s biggest champions among western politicians.
The criticism appears to have been a response to an outburst of irritation from Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy over the failure of Nato to agree on a concrete timeline to invite Ukraine to join the alliance prior to this week’s summit in Vilnius.
Prime minister Rishi Sunak swiftly distanced himself from Wallace’s remarks and Zelenskiy, speaking in Vilnius on Wednesday, said: “I don’t know what he means, how else we should be thankful. Let him write to me … Maybe in the morning we should wake up and personally thank the minister.”
On Thursday, Danilov was keen to move on from the row, portraying Wallace’s words as a solitary ill-advised outburst rather than an indication of fatigue creeping in among Ukraine’s allies. He insisted Ukraine had always been grateful for western support. “We’d like more, but we are grateful for what we already have,” he said.
Speaking from his office in a fortified compound of government buildings, with a large screen on one wall showing detailed maps of Russian rocket strikes on Ukraine over recent months, Danilov made a point of singling out British support for Ukraine, contrasting it with some other countries.
“If everyone had helped us as much as Britain helps us, we would have a totally different situation now,” he said.
“Particularly thanks to Britain we were able to withstand the very first period of the war, as well as the United States. The very first person who our president talked to at the beginning of the war was Boris [Johnson]. I still have this historic recording,” he continued.
Although Zelenskiy travelled to Vilnius furious at the lack of a firm Nato commitment, he later switched messaging and has been keen to portray the summit as a win for Ukraine, noting particularly a pledge of support from the G7.
The G7 nations vowed their “unwavering commitment to the strategic goal of creating a free, independent, democratic, and sovereign Ukraine” and said each country would focus on bilateral support to help boost Ukraine’s military capability.
“The main result for us is that we will have direct dialogue with seven countries. With each country we will have an individual approach and see the best way of cooperation possible,” said Danilov.
He claimed that the G7 announcement on long-term support for Ukraine was one more nail in the coffin of Russia’s imperial ambitions. “The most positive outcome of this summit is that it put an end to the restoration of the Russian empire. Russia cannot be an empire without Ukraine, and after what they’ve done to us, we will never be together with them for at least 50, 80, 100 years,” he said.
The Nato summit came as Ukraine’s much-anticipated counteroffensive is making slow progress, and Russia continues to bombard Ukrainian cities with missiles and drones. Military authorities said on Thursday morning that 20 Russian drones had been shot down over Kyiv and the surrounding region overnight, with four people injured in the city, two from smoke inhalation and two from shrapnel.
Danilov urged patience on the counteroffensive. “You can’t eat unripe fruit,” he said. “And if you know the weather in Ukraine, you know when the majority of fruits become ripe: August and September,” he said with a smile.
He added that constant pressure to show results was unhelpful. “The situation with the counteroffensive was blown up in the world media. It’s not a sporting competition. There’s a lot at stake, people’s lives are at stake,” he said.
Danilov also called on the west to work out a strategy for dealing with postwar Russia, saying the aborted armed revolt by warlord Yevgeny Prigozhin “should ring alarm bells” in the west.
Instead of fearing that a Ukrainian victory would destabilise Russia, the west should focus on planning for the scenario of a collapse of power in Moscow, he said.
“Chaos will come [to Russia] whatever happens … In the west, not everyone is ready for a Ukrainian victory. The big problem is nobody has an answer what to do with Russia, what it would look like after the war, what its place in the world will be. It’s definitely not going to look like how it does now. It will be fragmented, fragmented from the inside, and the world should be ready for that,” he said.
