Ukraine: Russia

(asked on 3rd September 2014) - View Source

Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, what contingency plans are in place for the eventuality that Russia continues to place troops in Ukraine.


Answered by
David Lidington Portrait
David Lidington
This question was answered on 9th September 2014

The situation in eastern Ukraine is of grave concern. The 18 August European Council condemned the increasing inflows of fighters and weapons from the territory of the Russian Federation into eastern Ukraine as well as the aggression by Russian armed forces on Ukrainian soil. It called upon the Russian Federation to immediately withdraw all its military forces from Ukraine. In response to the ongoing action against Ukraine’s territorial integrity the EU has imposed sectoral measures against Russia in addition to measures already imposed in response to the illegal annexation of Crimea. We called on the European Commission to continue work on further measures to act as a further deterrent to Russia and to ensure we are prepared to apply greater costs if Russia continues on its path, this work is progressing swiftly in Brussels. On 5 September, The Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, my hon. Friend the Member for Runnymead and Weybridge (Mr Hammond) expressed determination to impose further sanctions in response to Russia’s actions in Ukraine if a ceasefire was not reached and upheld.

NATO has also been working to help strengthen Ukraine’s security capability, and undertaken a number of reassurance measures for Allies. The UK is playing an active role and offering significant contributions to NATO efforts. As part of reassurance measures, the UK is contributing four Typhoons to NATO’s Baltic Air Policing mission and a Sentry E-3D aircraft, as part of the NATO Airborne Early Warning and Control Force. We are also augmenting NATO exercises in which we were already participating and contributing to new ones. At the NATO Summit on 5 September, the Prime Minister stated that the UK would always uphold Article 5 commitments to collective self-defence and expressed the hope that a multi-national spearhead force deployable anywhere in the world in just 2 to 5 days would be formed.

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