Momentum still in Ukraine’s favour – UK defence secretary

Britain’s Defence Secretary Ben Wallace has said “the momentum is still in Ukraine’s favour” in its fight with Russia.

“That doesn’t mean the big Russian war machine is going backwards,” he said, “but it is not advancing according to their plans”.

In an interview with the BBC at a Nato ministerial meeting in Brussels, Mr Wallace said that in some places, Russian artillery outnumbered Ukraine’s by as much as 20 to one. But he said that western nations were now sending more heavy weapons to address the imbalance.

Britain has already announced it will be sending Ukraine a small number of multiple rocket launchers – taken from the British Army’s stock. But Mr Wallace confirmed that Britain would also be sending 20 self-propelled artillery guns to Ukraine. Those artillery guns have been bought from a Belgian arms company to send directly to Ukraine.

Mr Wallace said that Britain was still determined to help lead the contributions of weapons to Ukraine. But he said “we don’t have everything in our armed forces”.

The defence secretary said western nations were also learning lessons about their own “vulnerabilities” from the war in Ukraine – one of them was the need for stocks of ammunition. He added that one of the limiting factors for supplying Ukraine with weapons was “what people have on their shelves”.