What was claimed
Britain has suspended aid to Ukraine due to the “severe economic crisis”.
Our verdict
False. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak recently pledged to continue to support Ukraine and the government has announced new aid packages.
The UK has not suspended aid to Ukraine
1 November 2022
A post on Twitter, which has also been shared on Facebook, claims that Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has halted financial aid to Ukraine due to the UK’s ongoing “severe economic crisis”.
The post says: “BREAKING: Britain suspends aid to Ukraine due to financial problems. Sunak says Britain’s “severe economic crisis” can no longer support aid to Ukraine. He said it’ll appear as a freeze in the foreign aid budget for another 2 years.”
This claim is false as no such announcement has been made.
Both the Prime Minister and the Foreign Office have recently confirmed that support for Ukraine will continue. In September, Prime Minister Liz Truss announced the UK had committed £2.3 billion of military aid in 2022, and would “meet or exceed” this in 2023.
On 25 October, the same day he was appointed Prime Minister, Mr Sunak spoke to the President of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, and pledged that the UK’s support for his country “would be as strong as ever”.
He followed this with a tweet which said: “Both he and the Ukrainian people can count on the UK's continued solidarity and support. We will always stand with Ukraine.”
On 31 October, two days after the claim that aid was being suspended first appeared on Twitter, the foreign secretary James Cleverly, updated the House of Commons on the latest situation in Ukraine. He said: “This year Britain has given Ukraine £2.3 billion of military support – more than any country in the world apart from the United States of America. We will provide Ukraine with more support to repair its energy infrastructure and we have committed £220 million of humanitarian aid.”
He added: “We will not waver in our support for Ukraine’s right to self-defence.”
On 1 November, the UK Government announced a £6 million support package to protect Ukraine’s critical national infrastructure and vital public services from cyber attacks.
This article is part of our work fact checking potentially false pictures, videos and stories on Facebook. You can read more about this—and find out how to report Facebook content—here. For the purposes of that scheme, we’ve rated this claim as false because we can find no evidence of Mr Sunak making such a statement and the government has reiterated its support for Ukraine.