Oral Answers to Questions

Alec Shelbrooke Excerpts

Monday 19th October 2026 Commons Chamber

[Wes Streeting]

I wholeheartedly agree with my hon Friend. At the next meeting of the Ukraine defence contact group, I will be continuing to mobilise practical support from our allies. When I was in Washington last week, I made our view very clear that Ukraine’s frontline is the frontline for freedom and democracy everywhere, and that we need to stand together to increase the cost of this war to Putin, because only Putin has the means to end this war. If Ukraine were to cease fire tomorrow while Russia continued, it would pay a heavy price in casualties and in the very freedom that the United Kingdom and all our allies seek to defend.

[Sir Alec Shelbrooke (Wetherby and Easingwold) (Con)]

I am grateful for the Secretary of State’s last answer, because it is important that the American President and the US Defence Secretary understand that Russia started this war. Did the right hon. Gentleman also point out that the President’s decision to buy diesel from Russia is actually funding Iran, because the Russians are buying it in from Iran, and that it is therefore counterintuitive to what the Americans are trying to achieve with their blockade?

[Wes Streeting]

There is no doubt that Russia presents a threat and is an adversary of the United States as well as of the United Kingdom. We see that with the company that Russia chooses to keep and with the risk that Russia poses to US interests and US personnel as well as our own in the way that it conducts itself. The United States has not been alone in buying fuel from Russia. We have had similar challenges here on the European continent in relation to Russian gas. The more that Putin’s war machine is funded, the longer this war goes on and the higher the price for everyone. That price is being paid most of all by the Ukrainians, who did not start this war and who lack the means to end it. Only Putin can do that. He could stop the war tomorrow; he chooses not to do so.