Six months into the war, is Britain suffering Ukraine fatigue?

AUkrainian flag flies over the town hall in Tunbridge Wells, as on so many churches and in city centres around the country. This affluent area has been among the most generous in offering aid to Ukrainian refugees, with more than 300 settling in the Kent town, part of an outpouring of kindness almost unprecedented in recent British history.

Yet as the energy crisis begins to bite, driven in large part by the effects of the war, which reached its six-month anniversary last Wednesday, there is an indication that sentiment is starting to waver. More questions are being asked: when does this conflict end? Is anyone working towards an endgame? Who is providing the political leadership to steel us for wartime levels of sacrifice?

“I do support arming Ukraine but I’m absolutely bloody terrified by the price of gas,” said Karine Hyde, 59, a medical practice manager. “I feel we need to think about ending this but I can’t see an end.”

Hyde is particularly concerned for her 21-year-old son graduating from university. “I think about his future a lot. I do think we’ve been a little guilty of overly glorifying the Ukrainians.”

The energy crisis, which has led to Ofgem announcing an 80 per cent rise in the price cap to £3,549 from October 1, is worsening by the day. It has several causes — increased demand from Asia, post-pandemic disruption, the slowing of the American shale boom — but the central cause is Vladimir Putin’s weaponisation of Russian gas reserves. On Friday it emerged that Russia is burning off £8 million of gas a day at a plant near its border with Finland, gas that would previously have helped power European homes.

Tunbridge Wells may be one of Britain’s wealthiest towns but plenty there are scraping by and anxiety runs deep. “We’ve got three young kids, so we are statistically one of the people living paycheque to paycheque,” said Sam Pointer, an insurance account manager. “It is a struggle. If the government could find some way to support Ukraine to come to a peaceful solution, that would be great. But I’m not too hopeful.”

Emmanuel Macron gave a “blood, sweat and tears” speech last week to stiffen sinews in advance of the winter crunch. Last week in Ukraine Boris Johnson echoed these sentiments, saying that Britain would support Ukraine for “however long it takes”.

Oleksii Makeiev, Ukraine’s ambassador responsible for sanctions, described the cost of living crisis as the price people must pay to “sleep at night”. Speaking from Kyiv, he appealed to western countries to hold firm. “The price of human lives is being paid by Ukrainians every day,” he said. “This is the price which is being paid to make sure you in the UK and Germany and in Poland are not hit by cruise missiles every day. So this is the ... request of solidarity.”

Britain has been steadfast so far and officials in Downing Street have been surprised and impressed by public support. But as a rudderless government drifts towards winter the public are slowly starting to wake up to the scale of the sacrifice they are having to make.

Yet isn’t this just what Putin wants? Part of the president’s calculation is that cosseted western voters won’t have the stomach for the end of their abundance. If he can pile on the pain for a year or two, wavering sentiment may force leaders in Washington, Brussels and London to dial down their support for Volodymyr Zelensky, or begin to advocate a ceasefire, allowing Russia to hold on to some of the territory it has gained.

Olly Fairhurst, 35, lives in Groombridge near Tunbridge Wells. He and his family have had Svetlana, a teacher from Kharkiv, and her teenage daughter in their spare room for almost six months.

He is convinced we must stand up to Putin’s aggression, as a matter of politics and principle. “We’re in a war with a geopolitical enemy that is attacking everything about our values. Russia has to fail. We have to prevail. You do have to suffer, everyone has to pay for wars. Is this one worth fighting? For me, I think it is.”

Fairhurst feels that the government needs to be far more honest about what the future holds. “We treated Covid like a war but this is being treated as an energy crisis. It’s almost like the government isn’t treating the war and the energy crisis as being connected. It’s wrong for them to be basking in the glory of supporting Ukraine and allowing the sacrifice in this country to be borne by the poorest.”

There are indications that as the domestic cost of the war spirals, the public is beginning to feel ambivalent about sanctions. In March, polling from YouGov showed that 48 per cent of people supported further sanctions on Russia, even if they led to higher energy bills, with 38 per cent opposed. By June this had reversed, with 45 per cent opposing new sanctions and 38 per cent in favour.

Feelings about hosting refugees have begun to shift too. About 115,000 Ukrainians have arrived in the UK, with as many as 5,000 still arriving each week. But a quarter of hosts have said they want to leave the scheme after six months, with some citing the cost of living.

On Friday night at Hurst Green community centre in Tandridge, Surrey, another small town with a remarkable number of refugees, British hosts and Ukrainian guests gathered for an evening of Anglo-Ukrainian cultural exchange. Sunflower flags were draped over the hall, Ukrainian music played and refugees gathered over cold dill and potato soup.

Mandi Turner, a mental health professional, has worked with two friends to house Lilia and her three children, from Chernihiv. “I think the government needs to re-energise people,” she said. “We all stood up as a crisis intervention. People wanted to make sure refugees fleeing the war were safe, but my worry is really for what happens next.

“It would be strange for people not to look closer to home during a cost of living crisis like this. The question is how do you sustain a commitment you’ve made to offer other people to be safe. The honeymoon is over. This is a new reality.”

As Britain welcomes a new prime minister next month, probably the hawkish Liz Truss, our stance on Ukraine is not expected to shift. In private, many Truss acolytes say she is even tougher on Russia than Johnson. Truss believes that the West made a fundamental miscalculation after the Cold War in thinking that Russia was on an irreversible path towards free market and democratic ideals. She does not intend to repeat that mistake. She will quickly face tough choices. Britain is running out of weapons to give Ukraine. The reality, as one Ministry of Defence source acknowledged, is that the UK’s financial contribution to the war effort will have dried up by the end of the year.

This means that the new prime minister will very soon face the question of whether to commit billions of pounds of additional support at a time when the public finances are under intense strain.

What’s particularly unsettling is that the possibility of an endgame in Ukraine seems further away than ever. Peace talks have achieved little. The view among policy planners in Whitehall is that we are on this train now, and there is no getting off even if we wanted to. Lord Ricketts, vice-chairman of the Royal United Services Institute and Britain’s former national security adviser, said: “I think we’ve taken the right stand but nobody is doing much thinking about how it might end and what role Britain might play in that.

 “This isn’t likely to end in some kind of 1945-style defeat for Putin and Russia. There’s no way out apart from building up the Ukrainians militarily and hoping something turns up. There’s no real-term long-term thinking about where we are heading. Can it go on indefinitely? Where do we see this coming out?

“There’s a broad but fairly shallow national consensus that this is the right thing to do. But it hasn’t been really debated. Will it stand up to events?”