Ukraine Update

Lord Anderson of Swansea Excerpts

Thursday 10th March 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Goldie (Con)]

The noble Baroness makes a really important point and one that has registered with many people, not least Governments. It is somewhat wide of my area of departmental responsibility, but I hear what she says and will reflect that back to the department.

[Lord Anderson of Swansea (Lab)]

My Lords, many serious analysts expected Kyiv to be taken via Belarus within two days or so. Clearly President Putin did not factor in the remarkable resistance of the people of Ukraine and their morale, in spite of the imbalance of forces. Quite rightly, we have decided to give sophisticated weaponry to Ukraine, but that surely needs very good training. Where will this training be done—outside the borders of Ukraine?

[Baroness Goldie (Con)]

I can confirm the first part of the noble Lord’s question: yes, there will be a degree of training required. He will understand that, for reasons of operational discretion, I am not going to be more explicit about that.