Defence Secretary doesn’t do a Raab and cuts his holiday short
Defence Secretary Ben Wallace is returning from a family holiday early over the deteriorating crisis in Ukraine.
The Cabinet minister arrived in the undisclosed European country yesterday, having travelled there following talks in Moscow.
But he decided to cancel the ‘planned’ family trip abroad because of his concern for the ‘worsening’ situation in eastern Europe.
It is understood Mr Wallace had accepted he would be leaving the trip early before heading there, rather than a reaction to a new development in Ukraine.
A senior defence source said: ‘As events worsen, the Secretary of State has cut short a planned long weekend with his children for half-term.’
The decision is markedly different from the one made by Dominic Raab, who, as foreign secretary, stayed on a family holiday in Crete as the Taliban marched back to power in Afghanistan.
Mr Wallace earlier likened the desperate diplomatic attempts to stop a Russian invasion to the build up to World War Two.
He suggested it is ‘highly likely’ that Russian President Vladimir Putin will order an attack, despite high-level talks aiming to avoid war.
Mr Wallace claimed there is a ‘whiff of Munich in the air’, in a gloomy reference to the agreement that allowed Germany to annex the Sudetenland from what was then Czechoslovakia in 1938.
The move came during a period of appeasement to Nazi leader Adolf Hitler, but ultimately failed to prevent the Second World War.
US officials have discussed intelligence that Russia is considering Wednesday as a target date to strike.
But Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky played down the fears, adding: ‘The best friend of our enemies is panic in our country. And all this information is just provoking panic and can’t help us.’
Diplomatic efforts have also included French President Emmanuel Macron sharing a call with Putin, but the British PM, who spoke to the Russian president earlier this month, is not believed to have any calls with Moscow scheduled.
UK nationals in Ukraine are being urged by the Foreign Office to ‘leave now while commercial means are still available’.
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