Liz Truss said “Putin must fail” as she vowed the West must never let its guard down again.
The Foreign Secretary said the West had taken its “eye off the ball” since the end of the Cold War in a joint press conference with US Secretary of State Antony Blinken in Washington on Tuesday.
Ms Truss started her address by saying the Russian leader’s invasion of Ukraine was causing “immense pain and suffering” but she declared Putin is “not making the progress he planned”.
She said the West has “surprised Putin with our unity and the toughness of our sanctions” and the “brave Ukrainian people have surprised him with their determination and their leadership”.
“We know from history that aggressors only understand one thing and that is strength,” she said.
“We know that if we don’t do enough now, other aggressors around the world will be emboldened. And we know that if Putin is not stopped in Ukraine, there will be terrible implications for European and global security.”
The Foreign Secretary said “since the end of the Cold War we took our eye off the ball” and “we must never let down our guard again”.
She also urged allies to increase their investment in Nato.
Speaking in Washington, she said: “Since the end of the Cold War we took our eye off the ball. But we are now stepping up together, and we must never let down our guard again.
“We’re determined to keep strengthening Nato, and urge all allies to increase their investment. We must accelerate Nato’s modernisation and deepen our cooperation on tech and cyber. We will end strategic dependence on authoritarian regimes for our energy and for other vital resources.
“And we will step up our work to build economic and security alliances around the world, including with India and the Gulf nations to further isolate Russia.”
She also said the West had spent too little on defence “for a number of years”.
“On the subject of defence spending, the reality is across the West we haven’t spent enough on defence for a number of years and we’ve seen a build-up of military capability from Russia in terms of both technology and numbers,” she added.
Ms Truss welcomed Germany increasing defence spending.
She said: “I’m not going to pre-empt any future discussions between the Chancellor and the Defence Secretary. But as well as conventional defence we also need to step up our efforts in areas like information.”
Unlike the Russians, the UK abandoned its information unit at the end of the Cold War.
She said: “We need to be making sure that on every possible front, whether its conventional defence, whether its technology or whether indeed its information we are able to outcompete our adversaries.”
Both the UK and US ruled out the possibility of a no-fly zone following a plea from Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.
He renewed his plea in the wake of an attack on a maternity hospital in the besieged port city of Mariupol. He tweeted: “How much longer will the world be an accomplice ignoring terror?”
On the issue, Ms Truss said: “The reality is that setting up a no-fly zone would lead to a direct confrontation between Nato and Russia, and that is not what we’re looking at.”
Meanwhile, Mr Blinken added: “Our goal is to end the war, not to expand it, including potentially expanding it to Nato territory.”
