UK troops for Ukraine

Your weekly dose of defence news, biased opinions and poorly curated content. You’re welcome.

Hold your horses, fellas - there are a few caveats. At the Coalition of the Willing meeting in Paris, the UK and France agreed to send troops to Ukraine in the event of a peace deal. The British figure was initially floated at 10,000, then the government realised they weren’t fooling anyone so revised it down to 7,500…even that is a stretch.

Ignoring minor details like troop numbers, committing soldiers is still a big deal, as is the security backstop the U.S. is supposedly bringing to the table.

It’s definitely good news for Ukraine (setting aside the loss of territory and thousands of lives), but for now it’s just words. Without Russian buy-in, it doesn’t amount to much.

What is going on this week? It feels like Trump has come back from the New Year with all sorts of bees in his bonnet. More on Venezuela below, but slightly closer to home is Greenland. Trump’s arm candy, Stephen Miller, has been rabbiting on recently, saying “nobody is going to fight the US militarily over the future of Greenland” and that “obviously Greenland should be part of the US”. Can someone tell ol’ Stevie-boy to pipe down?

Trump is either giving Europe the serious wake-up call it needs, or he might legitimately destroy NATO. How exciting.

All a bit heavy this week, isn’t it? Don’t worry — we’ve got something irrelevant for you. Back in the ’90s, there was a spate of UFO sightings across Northern Europe. So excited was the MOD by these reports that a department was set up to look into the viability of harnessing the “propulsion capabilities” of ET’s ship.

In hindsight, they probably should have focused on maintaining conventional air defences. But hey, who are we to judge?

Big events from the past, covered in brief and probably inaccurately.

On 6 January 2021, an angry mob stormed the U.S. Capitol building, as Congress met to certify the results of the presidential election. What began as a street protest turned into a direct attack on the seat of global democracy, forcing politicians to run and the world to sit watching, open mouthed.

Biden’s certification was completed later that day, but the damage was done. The images trashed assumptions about U.S. political stability and marked a moment when America’s divisions became a global concern.

Changing things up? This is where we briefly look at career options from across the civvy world - everything goes here so expect some absolute drivel. Sometimes Forces Assist can help place you, sometimes we can’t. Either way we can offer advice.

Becoming a paramedic is a good route for the more switched on among you.

We talk about this more on our insta - give us a follow:

Over at Forces Assist in the next few weeks we’re going to be publishing our annual Veteran Employers Guide. A huge moment in the publishing year. Keep an eye on our website and Despatches and we’ll be sure to get you a copy.

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Cheers,

Team Forces Assist