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As the war in Ukraine enters its fifth year Tuesday, Britain is running an aid project helping Kiev prepare to join NATO and opening up the country to U.K. businesses, writes Mark Curtis.

By Mark Curtis
Declassified UK

The U.K. is still trying to help Ukraine join NATO as the war enters its fifth year on Tuesday.

A British aid project, worth up to £38m, is meant to help Ukraine “make progress on conditions for membership of the EU and Nato” while “attracting international investors” and creating “an improved business environment.”

Known as the Governance Reform Programme, the project began last year and is slated to run until 2028.

It runs counter to Russia’s blanket opposition to Ukraine joining NATO and President Volodymyr Zelensky’s own recent offer to drop his ambition to join the military alliance.

The project document’s initial outline, drawn up in 2024, notes that, to meet the conditions for membership of NATO and the E.U., Ukraine needs to embark on “fundamental reform areas such as tackling corruption, strengthening the rule of law, building state capacity, and improving the investment climate.”

In this, “the war… provides opportunity for reform progress,” the document adds.

It also outlines U.K. officials’ belief that Britain is well-placed to promote reforms in Ukraine, due to the vast quantities of arms it has provided to Kyiv. 

It notes: “Since the invasion, our bilateral partnership has deepened significantly and we are often viewed as Ukraine’s diplomatic partner of choice, aided by our reputation of being a ‘first mover’ on military support.”

It adds: “We are viewed as influential, trusted and well placed by the GoU [government of Ukraine] to support them to deliver on some of the more controversial and hard-to-reach reforms.”

Britain’s trusted role in the country should translate into influence over Ukraine’s agenda, officials observe. “We will use our trusted voice to advance critical reforms and defend institutions against attempts from vested interests to undermine their independence.” 

Indeed, a key outcome of the project is intended to be that “The U.K. is better able to track and influence reform conversations.”

Foreign Direct Investment

The project is not the first U.K. aid programme in Ukraine intended to open up the country to international investors. 

Britain’s new project is a successor to the Good Governance Fund which ran from 2022-25. That project aimed to ensure that “Ukraine adopts and implements economic reforms that create a more inclusive economy, enhancing trade opportunities with the UK.”

Reforms encouraged by the U.K. are described as pointing to “better integration with Euro-Atlantic markets” and “aligning it [Ukraine] more closely with Western markets.”

The Governance Reform Programme will help tackle “some of the core issues (e.g. judicial reform, procurement) which are holding back foreign direct investment and are key to unleashing private sector growth.”

One key reform London is pushing is privatisation of state-owned enterprises (SOEs). The document notes that “their reform is intricately linked to EU accession and the Ukraine Plan, which aims to create a ‘functioning market economy’ and a level playing field between private companies and SOEs.”

A $100m joint U.S.-U.K. programme known as SOERA (State-Owned Enterprise Reform Activity) has been promoting the privatisation of Ukraine’s SOEs since 2022 “and it is performing well,” the document claims.  

It is blunt in saying that “We may experience resistance in some reform areas.” This may arise “due to power of vested interest and/or centralised decision making which blocks progress or undermines work in other areas.” 

NATO Accession

U.K. officials’ desire to see Ukraine in Nato is less and less likely to come to fruition now that President Zelensky has himself offered to drop his ambition to join the alliance in the face of Russian opposition.

It has long been clear that Ukraine’s possible accession to NATO has been a red line for Moscow, and at least partly explains Russia’s brutal invasion in 2022, which has caused hundreds of thousands of deaths and casualties. 

Prime Ministers Tony Blair and John Major both reassured Russia in the 1990s that any expansion of NATO would take account of Russia’s security interests: assurances which were reneged on by subsequent leaders. 

Boris Johnson’s government avoided promoting the possibility of a compromise peace in Ukraine soon after Russia invaded while Labour sees the Ukraine war as beneficial to the U.K. arms industry, and key to its overall economic growth plan for Britain. 

NATO’s policy is that “Ukraine’s future is in NATO” and that members of the organisation “will continue to support it on its irreversible path to full Euro-Atlantic integration, including Nato membership.”

Last year, in what NATO described as an “historic first,” the Ukrainian Navy led the opposing force in a NATO exercise, “incorporating battlefield experience into NATO’s collective training.”

A joint training centre has been established in Poland as “the first joint NATO-Ukraine organization in the NATO Command Structure.” NATO says the centre is “a key enabler of NATO–Ukraine cooperation, a driver of operationally informed innovation, and a catalyst for interoperability.” 

Mark Curtis is the co-director of Declassified U.K., and the author of five books and many articles on U.K. foreign policy.

This article is from Declassified UK.

Views expressed in this article and may or may not reflect those of Consortium News.