When asked if the West is doing sufficient to keep “the Russians at bay”, Defence Secretary Grant Shapps says we “need to do more” and “that it is unthinkable that we would lose this war to Putin." Report by Rowlandi. Like us on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/itn and follow us on Twitter at http://twitter.com/itn
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00:00 Do you think that the West is doing sufficient to give Ukraine enough armour and so forth
00:08 to keep the Russians at bay and one day take their country back?
00:12 I think it's insufficient.
00:16 Is there more that we could do, for example, a vehicle that I'm very familiar with, and
00:22 others probably are too, the Warrior vehicle, which is being retired, hundreds of which
00:26 have already been retired, we have 625 I understand.
00:30 Has there been any consideration to give some of those to Ukraine?
00:36 To give a slightly longer version, I do think that we need to do more.
00:40 I think it's unthinkable that we would lose this war to Putin.
00:47 I think we easily have the facility and capability not to lose this war, but it requires everyone
00:54 to lean their shoulders into it.
00:57 I was in Ukraine a couple of weeks ago having exactly this conversation with Zelensky.
01:02 I think that the catastrophic outcome of losing the war would be far more expensive than ensuring
01:11 that Ukraine is in a position to win it.
01:14 So I am, with that frame in mind, again looking through all of our stocks, including things
01:24 which could be retired, now two years on, things have moved on again to have another
01:29 scrub through the inventory.
01:31 But more to the point, because we have been incredibly generous in our gifting, I'm also
01:37 working on and with, or with and on I would say, our partners, of which there are 52 countries
01:44 in the Ukraine defence contact group, to make sure that they are also really digging deep
01:53 to ensure that they assist.
01:55 And so I look at, for example, our contribution in all things, including areas like long-range
02:03 missiles for example, but in many other areas as well, to make sure that we aren't an outlier
02:09 whilst others aren't giving as much.
02:12 Those things are very important.