The former Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain has long been criticised for describing Germany's attempted annexation of Czechoslovakia in 1938 as "a quarrel in a far-away country between people of whom we know nothing". Madame Chair, last but not least I also wanted to highlight today the UK’s continued concern for our three OSCE colleagues of the Special Monitoring Mission detained by Russia. UN ambassadors have told a new BBC documentary about the moment they learned of Russia's invasion of Ukraine. “These big cats are not only another victim of the Russian invasion but also suffered from human exploitation,” IFAW’s website quoted Natalia Popova of Wild Animal Rescue as saying after an earlier rescue.
- Ambassador Neil Holland condemns Russia's air attacks this week on Kyiv and Kharkiv, as well as the spate of attacks on Ukraine over the past month.
- The country is one of the world’s largest grain suppliers, meaning conflict is likely to cause supply problems, especially in Europe.
- The devastation was felt most acutely in Kharkiv, where an apartment block was hit, killing two people, and injuring 35 residents.
- The Biden administration has announced the approval of a $23bn deal to sell F-16 warplanes to Turkey, after Ankara ratified Sweden’s Nato membership, the state department said.
- The prime minister also sought to reassure the British public, pledging to do "everything to keep our country safe" and work with allies "for however long it takes" to restore Ukraine's sovereignty and independence.
The Ukrainian armed forces said they had shot down five Russian planes and a helicopter - which Russia denies - and inflicted casualties on invading troops. There have also been reports of troops landing by sea at the Black Sea port cities of Mariupol and Odesa in the south. Russian military convoys have crossed from Belarus into Ukraine's northern Chernihiv region, and from Russia into the Sumy region, which is also in the north, Ukraine's border guard service (DPSU) said.
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The prime minister also sought to reassure the British public, pledging to do "everything to keep our country safe" and work with allies "for however long it takes" to restore Ukraine's sovereignty and independence. Ukraine has imposed martial law across the country, meaning the military has taken control temporarily, and traffic jams have built up as people attempt to flee Kyiv. Labour's Keir Starmer and many Conservative backbenchers have called for further military options to be explored.
Russia denies it plans to invade, but has more than 100,000 troops on Ukraine’s border. He called on Moscow to engage in meaningful talks when he spoke alongside the Nato Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg in a joint news conference at the Alliance’s headquarters in Brussels. Cuts have already seen the size of the British Army fall from more than 100,000 in 2010 to around 73,000 now. Gen Sanders said that within the next three years the British Army needed to be 120,000 strong with the addition of reserves. But he said even that is not enough - so the Army should be designed to expand rapidly "to enable the first echelon, resource the second echelon, and train and equip the citizen army that must follow". But he was making the point that if war broke out troop numbers would be too small.
Simple guide to Ukraine crisis in maps
Russia might use the crisis to launch cyber and other hybrid attacks on Nato countries. It could even send troops to the three Baltic countries - Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania. After https://euronewstop.co.uk/what-happens-if-ukraine-falls.html -tank weapons were delivered last week and 30 British troops arrived to teach Ukrainian forces how to use them, the phrase "God Save the Queen" began trending on Twitter in Ukraine. Some bars and restaurants in Kyiv were offering free drinks to anyone who had a UK passport. It is regrettable - and sadly predictable - that we must gather today to condemn Russia’s latest wave of aerial attacks against the Ukrainian people.
- The UK's defence secretary has also warned that we need to be prepared for a war.
- Nato has a strong partnership with Ukraine (even though the country is not an official member) so it’s not surprising prime minister Boris Johnson has also joined in with Western allies in calling for an immediate de-escalation from Putin.
- "We divided our systems for different types of threats," he says, though of course this means relying on the West for ammunition and maintenance.
- The Russian president, Vladimir Putin, has pledged to make the findings of Moscow’s crash investigation public.
But both of these demands would break key Nato principles, namely that the alliance should be open to any European country that wants to join and that all Nato members should be sovereign nations. Russia wants Nato to make a legally binding promise that Ukraine will never become a member. It also wants Nato to withdraw its forces from most Eastern European countries. It is called self-determination, and perhaps the most important aspect of this principle is that borders cannot be changed by invading armies.
The government is likely to face further pressure on its tentative support for onshore wind and solar. Energy efficiency – long a neglected policy area – is also back in vogue, particularly in the Treasury. There is a new target and a new taskforce, though not yet a credible plan for insulating homes. For now the UK appears likely to stick to sanctions rather than engaging in direct military action unless a Nato ally is attacked, although some Conservative MPs have called for the Government to provide air support to Ukraine. Forces are on standby in eastern Europe, and Nato is working with Ukraine to modernise its forces and protect it against cyber attacks. Russia state media said the black boxes from the plane had been delivered to a special defence ministry laboratory in Moscow and investigators were already working on them.
One person was killed and another injured in Russian drone strikes in Beryslav, said Oleksandr Prokudin, regional governor of Kherson oblast. Russian forces launched eight rocket strikes on civilian infrastructure in the Donetsk and the Kherson oblasts, the general staff of the Ukrainian armed forces said in its morning briefing. If the deal collapses, it could leave congressional leaders with no clear path to approving tens of billions of dollars for Ukraine.
- The former minister, currently a serving Conservative MP, pointed out that the prime minister grew up without that existential threat.
- Ukraine had feared ahead of the winter that Russia was stockpiling weapons for large-scale attacks.
- The Russian offensive was preceded by artillery fire and there were injuries to border guards, the DPSU said.
- But beyond the Johnsonian rhetoric the 2021 document was quite clear-sighted about UK interests.
Many analysts say Beijing in particular is looking on as it formulates its own plans to reunify Taiwan with mainland China. The fear is that if Russia is allowed to invade Ukraine unresisted, that might act as a signal to other leaders that the days of Western powers intervening in other conflicts are over. Fighting could spread into Belarus where Russian forces are already stationed.
One ex senior minister suggested to me that there was a generational divide between those who had lived with the threat of the Cold War era, and those who had not. The former minister, currently a serving Conservative MP, pointed out that the prime minister grew up without that existential threat. The government says it wants to spend 2.5% of national income on defence - but has still not said when. Finland, Nato's newest member and a country which has an 800-mile border with Russia, has wider conscription. Refusal can mean a jail sentence, though there is the option of civilian service out of uniform too.
- That means using different kinds of missiles - hypersonic, cruise, and ballistic - but also firing these missiles along different routes.
- Russia might use the crisis to launch cyber and other hybrid attacks on Nato countries.
- Joe Biden will host the German chancellor, Olaf Scholz, at the White House on 9 February to discuss aid to Ukraine.
- It has challenged details of Moscow’s account and called for an international investigation.
- But the head of the British Army Gen Sir Patrick Sanders is not alone in issuing a national call to prepare for a major conflict on European soil.
- The UK is not protected from rising prices purely because it relies less on Russian gas.
Foreign Office minister James Cleverly warned Mr Putin's comments in recent days suggested he wanted to create "a wider Russian empire in all but name". It followed the Kremlin ordering troops into the rebel-held Ukrainian regions of Donetsk and Luhansk on recognising them as independent. Russia's invasion of Ukraine is a "catastrophe for our continent", Prime Minister Boris Johnson has said. Ukrainian protesters gathered outside Downing Street on Thursday afternoon to call for more action from the UK and the international community. Watch Boris Johnson call the Ukraine invasion "wanton and reckless aggression" by Russia.