Break cut short over Ukraine concerns
DEFENCE Secretary Ben Wallace is returning to the UK from a family holiday in Europe early because of his concerns over “the worsening situation in Ukraine”.
The Cabinet minister only arrived in the undisclosed country on Saturday, having travelled there following diplomatic talks in Moscow.
But he said on Sunday that he had cancelled a “planned long weekend abroad with my family” because “we are concerned about the worsening situation in Ukraine”.
It was understood Mr Wallace had accepted he would be leaving the trip early before heading there, rather than the decision coming in light of new information.
A senior defence source said: “As events worsen, the Secretary of State has cut short a planned long weekend for half-term.”
Ukraine has criticised the Defence Secretary’s comparison of diplomatic efforts aimed at preventing an invasion by Russia to appeasement, saying now is the wrong time to “offend our partners”.
His remark that there is a “whiff of Munich in the air” – in a reference to the agreement that allowed German annexation of the Sudetenland in 1938 but failed to prevent the Second World War – was not welcomed by Ukraine.
Ambassador to the UK Vadym Prystaiko warned that the panic being caused by the West sounding the alarm could be playing into Russian President Vladimir Putin’s hands.
“It’s not the best time for us to offend our partners in the world, reminding them of this act which actually not bought peace but the opposite, it bought war,” the diplomat told BBC Radio 4’s Broadcasting House programme.
“There’s panic everywhere not just in people’s minds but in financial markets as well,” he added, warning it is “hurting the Ukrainian economy on sort of the same level as people leaving the embassy”.
Mr Wallace said in an interview with The
Sunday Times that Moscow could “launch an offensive at any time”, with an estimated 130,000 Russian troops and heavy firepower amassed along Ukraine’s border.
“It may be that he (Putin) just switches off his tanks and we all go home but there is a whiff of Munich in the air from some in the West,” he added.
A source close to Mr Wallace explained that his frustrations centred on if Mr Putin strikes “come what may, then all the diplomacy would have been a straw man”, rather than being aimed at any European allies.
Northern Ireland Secretary Brandon Lewis said an imminent attack is “entirely possible” but insisted Mr Wallace was not criticising European allies with his remark.
Mr Lewis discussed the optimism of 1938 that diplomacy could prevent European conflict, adding: “It turned out that wasn’t the intent or aim of Adolf Hitler at the time.”
The Northern Ireland Secretary told the BBC’s Sunday Morning programme: “What he’s (Mr Wallace) drawing comparison with is we hope that the conversation that he’s had, that the Foreign Secretary and others... has a positive outcome and Russia does work through and find a diplomatic, peaceful way out of this.”