Luke Evans
Main Page: Luke Evans (Conservative - Bosworth)Department Debates - View all Luke Evans's debates with the Ministry of Defence
Ukraine
Luke Evans Excerpts(2 years, 2 months ago)
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Dr Luke Evans (Bosworth) (Con)
Much is rightly made of Russia’s role in this, but Belarus is playing a part as a staging post. What sanctions and steps are we taking to ensure that Belarus feels the pain for what it is doing? The Minister talks about “miscalculations”. What assessment has he made about accidental fire potentially going into other countries? It is a big concern to my constituents that we inadvertently find ourselves on a war footing without meaning to be.
James Heappey
The Belarussian ambassador has been summoned to the Foreign Office today to have the views of Her Majesty’s Government shared with them, and Belarus has also been included in the sanctions regime. We are acutely aware of the grave risk of miscalculation. As I said in response to the initial question about a no-fly zone, when things are happening at Mach 2, and where border incursions can last for just seconds, often it is not heads of Government who get to make the decision about whether a trigger on an anti-aircraft missile system is pulled. We are working hard within NATO to ensure that all those risks are clearly understood, and that the risk of miscalculation is minimised. But we must be clear: there is absolutely no way in a situation as kinetic and dynamic as this, that that risk can be removed altogether, and I am afraid that I am certain that there will be moments of miscalculation. Yesterday, a Turkish ship was apparently hit by one side or the other as it was leaving Odesa, and cool heads will be required if any such event were to happen.