Vladimir Putin “hasn’t taken the foot off the gas” on the Ukraine the UK’s Defence Secretary has insisted.
Ben Wallace said the border situation was still extremely serious and that the Russian President has still to make up his mind despite saying that “of course” Russia did not want war in Europe.
Wallace, who is in Brussels for a series of meetings at Nato headquarters, was sceptical about Russian claims that it had withdrawn forces from the Ukraine border.
Wallace said “What we haven’t seen is evidence of withdrawal that has been claimed by the Kremlin, in fact we’ve seen continued build-up of things like field hospitals and strategic weapons systems.
“We’ll take Russia at its word, but we’ll judge them on their actions and until we see a proper de-escalation, I think we should all be cautious about the direction of travel from the Kremlin.”
Asked about US intelligence on the timing of a predicted Wednesday invasion, he told Sky News: “Look, I’ve never talked about a date because in all the intelligence I’ve seen dates are not the issue, the issue here is the significant amount of forces.”
He added: “The real indications here have not been a date, the real indications have been the gradual and steady and significant build-up of forces into a readiness posture, and indeed into a deployment posture, which we’ve seen in the last few days, that would significantly indicate an incursion into Ukraine.
“Forces can only be held at readiness for so long, the Russians are better at it than most, they could hold those forces at readiness for weeks. So, there’s really no point speculating on a specific date, however there are definitely dates in the mix.”
Nato secretary general Jens Stoltenberg said the alliance had not seen any evidence of a Russian withdrawal.
Arriving at the meeting of the alliance’s defence ministers in Brussels, he said: “So far we have not seen any de-escalation on the ground – on the contrary, it appears that Russia continues the military build-up.”
He added that “we have not seen any withdrawal of Russian forces”, and “that contradicts the message of diplomatic efforts” from Moscow.
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