A Nato divided: UK accused of causing further Nato rift over Ukraine crisis
Ben Wallace was today accused of stoking further division between Nato allies in its response to the Ukraine -Russia crisis, after invoking appeasement of Nazi Germany.
The defence secretary, who today announced he would cut short a family holiday to deal with the crisis, was rebuked by Ukraine’s UK ambassador Vadym Prystaiko for saying there had been a “whiff of Munich in the air from some in the west”.
This is a likely attack on Germany and France who have been less hawkish against Russia.
“It’s not the best time for us to offend our partners in the world, reminding them of this act which actually did not bring peace but the opposite, it bought war,” Prystaiko said.
“There’s panic everywhere – not just in people’s minds, but in financial markets as well,”
US intelligence suggests there is now 140,000 Russian troops amassed on the Ukrainian border and that an attack could be days away.
Joe Biden warned Vladimir Putin over the weekend that an invasion of Ukraine would lead to “swift and severe costs” during a lengthy phone call.
Efforts to broker a diplomatic solution to the crisis have been fruitless so far, with the US refusing to accept Russian demands that Ukraine is never allowed to become a Nato member.
Wallace said last night that a Russia-Ukraine war was now “highly likely” and that Moscow could “launch an offensive at any time”.
“It may be that he [Putin] just switches off his tanks and we all go home but there is a whiff of Munich in the air from some in the west,” he said.
“The worrying thing is that despite the massive amount of increased diplomacy, that military build-up has continued. It has not paused, it has continued.”
Yury Ushakov, a Kremlin foreign policy aide, yesterday rejected claims that a Russian attack was imminent.
“Hysteria has reached its peak,” he said.