‘Shouting match’: UK’s David Cameron preps for battle over Ukraine

LONDON — World leaders gather at the “Davos of defense” on Friday to talk support for Ukraine. But as drama goes, the Munich Security Conference might just be the warm-up act.

Russia has been excluded from the annual defense powwow — but Moscow’s cantankerous Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov is due to attend next Tuesday’s meeting of G20 foreign ministers in Rio de Janeiro.

“It will be a shouting match,” predicted one senior U.K. government official. Like others POLITICO spoke to for this piece, they were granted anonymity to speak freely about British diplomacy.

David Cameron, the British ex-prime minister who made a dramatic comeback last year to become the country’s foreign secretary, is also expected in Rio. While the pair are unlikely to have a formal meeting, U.K. officials have not ruled out the prospect of a shorter brush-by that could get awkward.

The last formal meeting between Lavrov and a British foreign secretary was frosty at best. Liz Truss met him days before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, only for the Kremlin to seize on an apparent geography mix-up by Truss under questioning by Lavrov.

When Truss’ successor James Cleverly condemned Moscow’s “distortions, dishonesty and disinformation” at the U.N. Security Council eight months later, Lavrov had already left the room.

As the war grinds into its third year, however, Britain’s most strenuous lobbying is aimed not at Moscow — but its own allies.

Next week, Britain is expected to take part in a meeting of the Security Council in New York and a call between G7 allies to mark the two-year anniversary of the invasion.

It will cap a flurry of British diplomacy for Ukraine at a time when the bandwidth of world leaders — especially in the U.S. — is dominated by the Israel-Gaza crisis. A second U.K. official suggested Cameron was planning to use the Security Council to stage another intervention.

A taste of the pushback in store for Cameron came on Wednesday. With U.S. politicians struggling to agree aid to Kyiv, Cameron appealed to them directly with an article in The Hill: “I do not want us to show the weakness displayed against Hitler in the 1930s,” he wrote. Republican representative Marjorie Taylor Greene — a key Donald Trump ally — had a comeback at the ready: “Frankly he can kiss my ass.”

Cameron made similar pleas ahead of the Munich conference, urging other nations to show “unity” and “that we have the will to see this through.” Attendees Friday include U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz. Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is also expected to show up.

For the U.K. foreign minister it will be a welcome distraction from the other big story of the summit — an expected meeting with his Chinese counterpart. Cameron hailed a “golden era” of relations with Beijing while prime minister — a position now viewed with scorn by China hawks in his Conservative Party. Later he also helped promote a development project with links to China.

Cameron has urged allies to boost defense production | Petter Bernsten/AFP via Getty Images

Cameron’s status as an ex-PM has opened doors to higher-level meetings than he would otherwise get, including with heads of government.

But while aides to both men insist Cameron and Prime Minister Rishi Sunak are in lockstep on policy, the forceful style of Cameron’s recent interventions has raised some eyebrows in Downing Street.

No. 10 Downing Street was aware of Cameron’s article in The Hill, but two government officials declined to say whether Sunak’s team had formally signed off on the text. “Donald Trump is famously thick-skinned,” one noted with irony.

Optimism

Still, some optimism remains inside the British government about the Russia-Ukraine war. Officials expect Ukraine to be able to export its full harvest next year after pushing back Russia’s fleet in the Black Sea, and argue the war is severely straining Moscow’s economy.

While there is frustration in Whitehall about the hold-up in the U.S. Congress, officials believe there is still a good chance a new financial package will pass. Even if it doesn’t, they argue, Ukraine has enough European support to hold the line for a long while yet.

In the meantime, Britain is focusing on new sanctions and controls on Russian gas, metals and manufacturing. Cameron has urged allies to boost defense production, and British government officials have been meeting on whether they can seize Russian state assets to finance Ukraine’s reconstruction.

The bigger question will be what happens if Donald Trump is elected president. The Republican frontrunner’s comment this week — that he would “encourage” Russia to attack NATO member countries who don’t pay their way — got a typically understated British pushback from Cameron, who said the remarks were “not sensible.”

Even then, British hope hasn’t faded. Some in Whitehall believe in a world where, a year from now, Ukraine is doing much better and Trump — ever the entrepreneur — can be persuaded to back a winner.

Good luck, as they say, with that.