Derek Twigg
Main Page: Derek Twigg (Labour - Widnes and Halewood)Department Debates - View all Derek Twigg's debates with the Ministry of Defence
(9 years, 6 months ago)
Commons ChamberUrgent Questions are proposed each morning by backbench MPs, and up to two may be selected each day by the Speaker. Chosen Urgent Questions are announced 30 minutes before Parliament sits each day.
Each Urgent Question requires a Government Minister to give a response on the debate topic.
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I do not think it is right for other countries to get involved in the conflict in eastern Ukraine. On the contrary, Russia should now be withdrawing its heavy weapons from eastern Ukraine and be putting pressure on the separatists to lay down their arms. On the location of the training, we are not putting combat troops anywhere near the front line. The training we have been providing to the peshmerga in northern Iraq has, as my hon. Friend says, been well away from the front line. We have trained more than 1,000 peshmerga as well as supplying them with machine guns and ammunition.
We know for a fact that the Russians are supplying lethal weapons to the rebels. NATO’s response has been pretty woeful, but may I ask a specific question about what the Secretary of State said? I am sure that he mentioned that he was considering what else can be done about further requests, so will he enlighten the House on what more might be being considered to be put in place in the future?
We have had a series of requests from the Ukrainian Government, including lists of equipment of all kinds. I do not want to give too many details, but we are looking at these shortfalls in their capacity and at what further training we might be able to provide in addition to the infantry training, logistics and medical and intelligence capacity-building training I described.