PM Sunak wants a “Goldman Sachs dashboard” report on the conflict, sources tell state TV
British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has requested a “data-driven assessment” of the situation in Ukraine, a Whitehall source told BBC Newsnight on Friday, prompting fears that London might slow or stop the flow of supplies to Kiev.
The state broadcaster’s unnamed source said the “Goldman Sachs dashboard” examination of the conflict would look at how Ukraine has been using the military supplies provided by the UK.
“This is about looking at what we have put in, what we have got out,” the source said.
“Wars aren’t won [by dashboards]. Wars are won on instinct. At the start of this it was Boris [Johnson] sitting down and saying: ‘Let’s just go for this.’ So Rishi needs to channel his inner Boris on foreign policy, though not of course on anything else,” the source added.
Sunak has been PM since late October, replacing Liz Truss after just 50 days at 10 Downing Street. Before he was ousted by his own party in September, Johnson had been a hawk on Ukraine and even traveled to Kiev in April to dissuade President Vladimir Zelensky from making peace with Russia, according to Ukrainian media.
Zelensky “has been talking to Rishi. He is trying to inspire him, saying the UK are the great liberators, the great fighters. ‘We need you. Rise to that’,” the Whitehall source told the BBC.
British intelligence and “key figures in Whitehall” believe Russia has “effectively run out” of supplies. Admiral Sir Tony Radakin, the chief of the defense staff, told the Royal United Services Institute earlier this week that “Russia is losing” and that the “free world” has “real victory within our grasp.”
Ukraine relies entirely on the US and its allies for its military needs. Its chief of general staff, General Valery Zaluzhny, told the Economist his army needed at least 300 tanks and 700 infantry armored vehicles – more than what the British Army is currently fielding, by way of example. Even as London and Washington continue to send convoys of weapons to Ukraine, ignoring Moscow’s warnings, they insist they are not parties to the conflict.
According to the BBC’s source, this is due to the UK pressuring US President Joe Biden into acting more forcefully on Ukraine.
“We have stiffened the US resolve at all levels – pressure from us but always friendly,” the unnamed Whitehall official said. “We don’t want Rishi to reinforce Biden’s caution. We want him to push, in the way Boris did.”
RT (Russia Today) is a state-owned news organization funded by the Russian government. The information provided by this news source is being included by the Libertarian Hub not as an endorsement of the Russian government, but rather because it is being actively censored by Big Tech, Western governments and the corporate press. During times of conflict it is imperative that we have access to both sides of the story so we can form our own opinions, even if both sides are spewing their own propaganda. The censorship of RT, despite likely being a propaganda outfit for the Russian government, reduces our ability to hear one side of the conflict. For that reason, the Libertarian Hub will temporarily republish the RSS feed from RT. Visit https://rt.com
