Ukraine Update

Tim Loughton Excerpts

Monday 5th September 2022 Commons Chamber

[Mr Wallace]

Yes. I understand—and the hon. Gentleman, from the part of the world in which he lives, will also understand—the cost of standing up for freedom, the rule of law and doing the right thing. They do not come easily and at no cost. To be fair, I think the British public know that. Apart from one or two emails in my inbox, I have not found many people who have remotely swayed from the opinion that we are doing the right thing in Ukraine. That applies to all parties. In my constituency, it does not matter whether they are voters from my party or not—[Interruption.] I notice that I have just had a missed call from the Foreign Secretary, so I hope that I am not being sent to be the Home Secretary after that—I hope she was not ringing me about that. We still have a united population, which is a good thing.

[Tim Loughton (East Worthing and Shoreham) (Con)]

I commend the continued leadership that the Secretary of State and his team have shown over the past few months. It is particularly important to help stiffen the resolve of our European partners because we are in this for the long haul. On that basis, there has been speculation by recently retired generals that, given that this could drag on and that Putin sees little prospect of winning, he may resort to using battlefield nuclear weapons. What is the Secretary of State’s assessment of that possibility and what does he think the response of NATO would and should be?

[Mr Wallace]

We do not hide from the fact that Russian military doctrine involves the use of tactical nuclear weapons under certain conditions—that is public knowledge. The conditions are not remotely met for that, but we have nevertheless seen President Putin evoke nuclear weapons in public more than 35 times, I think, in the last six months. Of course we are mindful of that and, as I have said all along, it is incredibly important that we calibrate everything we do in the west to make sure that this is about Russia in Ukraine and saying that Russia must fail in Ukraine. It is not a threat to the Russian state. The west and NATO are not organising against the Russian state; the international community is organising to help Ukraine defend itself. That message is loud and clear. The consequence of the use of tactical nuclear weapons would be global condemnation of Russia by all countries, including countries such as China, and I think President Putin is well aware of that.