Don't Miss
Most Read
Trending on GB News
Chairman of the Defence Committee, Tobias Ellwood, has told GB News the situation in Ukraine “is our Cuban Missile crisis" and there would be “huge consequences” for failing to send a division of forces into Ukraine “months ago”, because Putin understands strength.
“There’s talk of Munich, look what happened there when we hesitated and we ceded control of parts of Europe”, Mr Ellwood said.
He criticised the West’s risk averse nature, telling viewers “normally when America steps back from the international stage, Britain steps up to the plate… that’s what I want to see now.”
Speaking to Alastair Stewart, Mr Ellwood says “we have no way of persuading Russia or influencing Russia in any form.”
He added the UK was “blinking” and needed “better statecraft” to stand up to President Putin who will “blink less… no doubt about it”.
Mr Ellwood suggested Putin remained “angry” at the collapse of the Soviet Union and “he blames the west”, and because this the Russian President was leveraging towards China.
“We are in for a couple of bumpy decades now, international security is on the demise, we need to be spending more money on defence, we have become too risk averse”, Mr Ellwood said.
Criticising the West’s approach to Ukraine, Mr Ellwood told GB News the UK’s response was not about defeating Putin “it’s about standing up and defending democracy”.
“This is a European democracy putting its hand up and saying ‘help me in my hour of need’… We have moved our tanks and our forces all around Ukraine but not in it, that’s not the language Putin understands”, Mr Ellwood said.
Expressing sympathy for Ben Wallace, Tobias Ellwood said the Ministry of Defence was tied by the political direction granted by 10 Downing Street, “there is a gap in the market for international leadership that Britain could step into”, he said.
Mr Ellwood left a stern warning that taking action to help Ukraine was not “sabre rattling” but instead a call for help from a European country, with the West nowhere to be seen.