The UK is set to send more defensive weapons to Ukraine, Prime Minister Boris Johnson has confirmed.
The UK has already sent anti-tank weapons to the Ukrainian military to help counter the threat posed by Russian forces gathered at the country’s borders.
Johnson said lethal defensive weapons and non-lethal aid would now also be sent to the country, telling the Commons today (23 February): “In light of the increasingly threatening behaviour from Russia, and in line with our previous support, the UK will shortly be providing a further package of military support to Ukraine.
“This will include lethal aid in the form of defensive weapons and non-lethal aid.”
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Defence Secretary Ben Wallace has also said it will become a 'busy' period for the Army, saying Vladimir Putin has gone 'full tonto' - 'tonto' being the Spanish word for 'crazy'.
Speaking with military personnel at the Horse Guards building in Westminster, Wallace compared the Russian president to Tsar Nicholas I during the Crimean War.
Wallace said Putin has made the mistake of having no allies in his actions.
Wallace said: “It’s going to be a busy Army.
“Unfortunately we’ve got a busy adversary now in Putin, who has gone full tonto.”
He added that the UK has 1,000 personnel on stand-by to respond to the developing crisis in Ukraine, adding: “The Scots Guards kicked the backside of Tsar Nicholas I in 1853 in Crimea – we can always do it again.”
Wallace told reporters he was keeping the possibility of sending further weapons to Ukraine 'under constant review', adding: “We’re in a pretty good position to deliver any type of aid pretty quickly to Ukraine, no matter what that aid is.”
He suggested that Russian forces invading Ukraine could be followed by a mobile crematorium to help disguise the number of casualties inflicted during the potential war.
Wallace continued: “Fundamentally, when you have over 60 percent of your combat forces poised on the borders of another state, the overwhelming scale of the Russian intimidation and forces – including some pretty horrendous weapons systems – are pretty worrying.
“And we also expect to see some of the things they’ve done previously. Previously, they’ve deployed mobile crematoriums to follow troops around the battlefield, which in anyone’s book is chilling.
“If I was a soldier, and knew that my generals had so little faith in me that they followed me around the battlefield in a mobile crematorium, or I was the mother or a father of a son, potentially deployed into a combat zone, and my government thought that the way to cover up loss was a mobile crematorium – I’d be deeply, deeply worried.”
Topics: UK News
Jess Hardiman