Gen. Bryan Fenton, commander of United States Special Operations Command, was recently interviewed by the Associated Press regarding the lessons his force is learning from the conflict.
The initial story with the interview indicated that the Americans ha gained insights into Ukraine “mostly through the eyes” of the military’s United Kingdom “special operations partners” who have been using the battlefields in Ukraine to test new military approaches.
Fenton noted that British special operations forces were leveraging the experiences of Royal Air Force pilots and Royal Navy units to provide advice to Ukraine on how to use combat drones and how to navigate ships through the Black Sea, respectively.
Later publications of the story have removed this part of the interview, eliminating any mention of the British Armed Forces’ military involvement in Ukraine.
The Russian military has long accused the U.K. of playing a significant role in purportedly Ukrainian operations. The Russian Defense Ministry has previously accused “British specialists” of assisting Kyiv in planning and executing a naval drone strike on the Russian Black Sea Fleet back in October 2022. (Related: Report: British Armed Forces directly involved in Ukraine conflict.)
Multiple other sources confirm British military directly involved in Ukraine
Fenton is not the only high-ranking military or political official to confirm that British military units are actively participating in the conflict in Ukraine.
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Earlier this year, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz confirmed that British and French planners were aiding Ukraine in launching strikes with medium-range missiles supplied by the two countries.
While Western nations have acknowledged maintaining a small number of military personnel in Ukraine for tasks like protecting diplomatic premises or providing advisory support, they have denied participation in combat operations.
When asked about Fenton’s remarks, the British Ministry of Defense told Business Insider that “it is the long-standing policy of successive governments not to comment on U.K. Special Forces.”
Polish journalist Zbigniew Parafianowicz last December claimed in his new book “Poland At War” that British special forces have been on the ground in Ukraine aiding against the Russian special military operation within weeks of the conflict beginning.
The book cites political insiders and officials, including a Polish government minister who claims to have encountered British commandos in mid-March 2022 while traveling between Kyiv and Zhytomyr.
The minister described meeting Ukrainian soldiers and British special forces, uniformed and armed, moving with Ukrainians in trucks and off-road vehicles equipped with artillery radars to track targets. This adds to evidence suggesting U.K. soldiers were secretly deployed to Ukraine without parliamentary disclosure, actively participating in operations.
In mid-April 2022, The Times reported British special forces training local troops in Kyiv for the first time since the conflict began. Later, Declassified U.K. revealed that 50 elite British troops were in Ukraine, three times more than any other ally.
The British Defense Ministry later confirmed that soldiers have been in Ukraine since the invasion to protect the British embassy but declined to comment on special forces’ roles. A spokesperson reiterated the ministry’s position of not commenting or speculating about what special forces units are doing in operations.
“Poland At War” further claims that President Volodymyr Zelensky’s own bodyguards were trained by the U.K.’s most elite special forces unit, the Special Air Service; and that Polish, American and British forces have been building up the capabilities of Ukrainian special forces units since 2014. North Atlantic Treaty Organization soldiers and military advisers alike were initially focused on evacuating Ukrainians but later cooperated with Kyiv in providing military assistance in Kharkiv and the disputed Donbas region.
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