The point is that the UK didn’t care about the rights of another nation’s to their borders. Not even so little that they were willing to sacrifice a little football for it. They also didn’t support Iceland’s rights to their own fisheries when a foreign nation tried to fish in their waters. Iceland was, and still is a NATO member.
My point is that the UK doesn’t care about other nations, and I can see numerous situations where they will fail to act if a fellow NATO member is attacked.
Why should the UK (or any country) care about defending another country which isn't a treaty ally? So far the only time when a NATO member actually invoked Article 5, the UK did fulfill their obligations.
Because the UK is a part of an international society of nations that share a common planet on which all humans live. Event though the two nations are not in a direct military alliance, the UK interest lie directly with Ukraine when it comes to protecting Ukraine from a foreign invasion (unless the invading army was the UK army). The UK trades with Ukraine, they share values (or at least so they say), tourists visit between the two places, and workers seek job in each others country.
The UK didn’t need to send an army to Ukraine to protect them from the Russian invasion, but they should have at least sent a strong message to Russia that this would not be tolerated. A perfect opportunity for such a message was presented when Russia hosted the World Cup the following year... The message: “We are just gonna say this is not OK, but really Russia can do whatever they want”.
So the UK should punish their own athletes in order to make a symbolic statement that would have zero real impact? Not following your logic there buddy. But if you'd like to defend Ukraine I hear they're taking volunteers, feel free to go sign up and turn your words into action.
Jimmy Carter actually boycotted the 1980 Moscow Olympics to protest the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. That was a stupid move and accomplished precisely nothing.
The UK officials (as did other western European officials) did boycott the world cup. It is a really weak message. A real message would have been to boycott the world cup entirely (not just the UK, but all of Europe). It would not only have sent a strong message to the Russian government—but more importantly the Russian public would have hated it. Imagine your country can finally hold the World Cup, only to have your military ruin it by doing something stupid like annexing a peninsula you don’t care about.
