Vladimir Putin, Russia’s president, is a “thug” and a “liar”, one of Britain’s
most senior ambassadors has said, as the EU prepares today to approve tough
new sanctions against Moscow.
Sir Peter Westmacott said the West’s increasingly firm response to Russia was
beginning to have an impact on the Kremlin.
The British ambassador to the United States said Moscow’s aggression in
Ukraine was starting to look like “the wrong call”.
He spoke as the Ministry of Defence announced that a battle group of 1,350
troops and armoured vehicles, including Challenger tanks, would join Nato
exercises in Poland.
The Government said Exercise Black Eagle in south-west Poland would see
Britain’s biggest deployment to Eastern Europe since 2008.
The exercises were designed to reassure Nato’s eastern members that the
alliance would shield them from Russian aggression.
Sir Peter said Mr Putin’s behaviour in Ukraine had been “thuggish, dishonest
and reckless” and he “thought he’d done pretty well after he stole Crimea”.
“It doesn’t look so good now,” he said on the US cable channel MSNBC, part of
the NBC group. “It’s starting to look like this was the wrong call. This is
a defining moment for what is going on in Ukraine.
“We’ve had some very bad behaviour from the Russian side for a long time now,
and now we’ve had this terrible atrocity — the shooting down of the
aircraft. We have to change the cost/benefit analysis for Putin, for the
Russian people, for the government that they have elected there.”
Nato has stepped up manoeuvres in Eastern Europe since the annexation of
Crimea with generals believing the alliance needs to reset its stance
towards a more aggressive Kremlin.
Exercise Black Eagle is the latest Nato war game to be bolstered at short
notice in the area.
Military sources said the exercise at Poland’s Zagan training area had been
long planned, but significantly beefed up in recent weeks.
Polish forces and other Nato nations are expected to join the exercise. The
bulk of the British forces are expected to come from the King’s Royal
Hussars, though Army sources said a final decision had not yet been made.
Michael Fallon, the Defence Secretary, said the exercise showed Britain’s
“sustained and substantial support to Nato’s eastern border”. Britain was
not ruling out “further enhancements”, he said.
The confrontation over Ukraine is also likely to dominate a Nato summit in
Wales in September. Mr Fallon said: “We have a strong opportunity at the
Nato summit to discuss how we will continue our response to Russia’s illegal
annexation of Crimea and its destabilisation of eastern Ukraine.”
The sending of an armoured battle group is by far Britain’s largest show of
military backing to Eastern Europe since the crisis in Ukraine began.
Four RAF Typhoon fighter jets were sent to Lithuania earlier in the year to
reinforce Nato air patrols over the Baltic nations and British troops have
also joined smaller military manoeuvres.
Nato generals are calling for the alliance to pour military resources into
Eastern Europe and build up a deterrent against Russia after years in which
alliance members have cut spending and focused on conflicts elsewhere.
Gen Philip Breedlove, Nato’s top commander in Europe, said last week he wanted
to transform a military base in Eastern Europe into a staging post stocked
with weapons, ammunition and ration packs in case Nato troops had to rush to
the area in the event of a crisis.
Western leaders are concerned that the Kremlin has chosen to escalate the
conflict in Ukraine, even after the downing of MH17, by carrying out cross
border artillery strikes and by sending more equipment to separatists.
Tony Blinken, a national security adviser to Barak Obama, said existing
sanctions did not appear to have forced Mr Putin to back off. He said:
“We’ve seen convoys of tanks, multiple rocket launchers, artillery, and
armoured vehicles. There’s evidence it’s preparing to deliver even more
powerful multiple rocket launchers.”
Dutch and Australian investigators were once again prevented from reaching the
site of the Malaysia Airlines crash as fighting continued nearby.
Ukraine forces advanced on Donetsk, the pro-Russian separatist capital, from
the east and there was fighting close to the site near the town of Torez.
Later on Monday, Igor Girkin, the rebels’ military chief, denied his troops
had a Buk surface-to-air missile as he refused to be blamed for the downing
of the jet.
