Ukraine Update

Aaron Bell Excerpts

Monday 25th April 2022 Commons Chamber

[Mr Wallace]

I am grateful and thank the hon. Member for his comments. Our objective is to push, or help Ukraine push back Russia from both its actions since February, and if Ukraine takes the choice to continue to try to push Russia out of its illegally occupied territories, then of course the west and the international community will stand by it in doing that. I think, in its simplest form, Britain wants to help Ukraine be free to choose. What it chooses is slightly secondary to the fact that it has the freedom to choose in the first place as a sovereign state. That is what we are all trying to work for, and the only country that does not want to do that is Russia.

[Aaron Bell (Newcastle-under-Lyme) (Con)]

One of the main lessons from this conflict seems to be that, alongside the courageous resistance of the Ukrainian people and the military, one of the reasons it has not gone to plan for Russia is the failure of its logistics in seemingly running out of food, fuel and other supplies. Could my right hon. Friend confirm that one of the lessons we will learn and the whole world should learn from this is that top-quality logistics, such as the UK armed forces have, is even more essential perhaps than military manpower?

[Mr Wallace]

It is really important. We see, from photographs, Russian soldiers going to war with not much equipment, poor equipment, rations that are years out of date, not just a few days or weeks, and all of that has a horrendous effect on morale. We see them at war with cheap handheld radios—not their own radios, because they do not work—and we see them badly prepared. Bad battle preparation leads to defeat often and that is often the mess they are in. We saw that some very expensive equipment got stuck in the mud because they used cheap tyres from somewhere else. Those things matter. It is also an important lesson for our defence that sometimes the less sexy things are actually the things we should invest in. They are often the things first cut when the Treasury comes calling and you pay for it in the end.