By Tony O’Reilly-
Prominent Tory , Tobias Ellwood has criticized the West’s response to the Ukraine crisis in which NATO and the West are threatening consequences in the event of a Russian invasion in Ukraine.
The chairman of the Defence Select Committee has said “we have no leverage” over Russia and “there is no coordination between what the West is actually doing”.
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Tobias Ellwood told LBC: “Putin is aligning Russia towards China. So, any sanctions that we threaten absolutely plays into his own strategy.
“That’s my point. We don’t have a strategy and the final one has to do with dialogue. You know, Putin naturally craves the international spotlight and we’re actually running around him and he’s enjoying this.
“We have no leverage, we have no collective effort. There’s no coordination between what the West is actually doing.”
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He accused the government of trying to “hide behind the fact” that Ukraine is not a NATO member, pointing out that the UK stepped in to help non-NATO member Libya.
The Conservative MP and former soldier added: “We’ve got this completely wrong.
Meanwhile, the Labour leader has called on the government to impose tougher possible sanctions on Russia.
Sir Keir Starmer said he would “like to see the government go further” and for the threat to be “very real” to deter Russia from invading Ukraine.
It follows the sighting of a German military aircraft carrying troop reinforcements which landed at Lithuania’s Kaunas airport this morning, a Reuters eyewitness said, the first of several planned deployments amid fears in the region over a possible Russian invasion of Ukraine.
The A400M airplane carried around 70 troops of what is expected to grow to a 360-strong German deployment, which comes on top of existing Nato forces in the region, a spokesperson for the alliance’s enhanced forward presence battlegroup said.
The new deployments include artillery, reconnaissance troops and medics from units throughout Germany, with arrivals expected to continue throughout this week.
Since 2017, Nato has deployed battlegroups in Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia and Poland, in response to Russia annexing the Crimea peninsula from Ukraine in 2014. Meanwhile, British and other foreign nationals in Ukraine have been warned to flee the country in light of rumours of an imminent Russian invasion. It has left families grappling with difficult dilemmas.
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