Ukraine has pushed back against claims from the defence secretary Ben Wallace that diplomatic talks with Vladimir Putin have “a whiff of Munich” about them.
Ambassador Vadym Prystaiko said it was wrong to “offend our partners” by drawing parallels with the policy of appeasement which saw Britain and France give the green light for Adolf Hitler to annex the Sudetenland in talks in the German city in 1938.
The defence secretary today cut short a family holiday in order to fly back to the UK amid fears of an imminent Russian invasion of Ukraine.
In an apparent effort to avoid repeating the mistakes of Dominic Raab, who was widely criticised as foreign secretary for remaining on the beach as Afghanistan fell to the Taliban, Mr Wallace announced he was returning to London after just one day because he was “concerned about the worsening situation in Ukraine”.
Mr Wallace said in an interview with The Sunday Times that Moscow could “launch an offensive at any time”, with an estimated 130,000 Russian troops and heavy firepower amassed along Ukraine’s border.
“It may be that he just switches off his tanks and we all go home, but there is a whiff of Munich in the air from some in the West,” he added.
Kyiv has repeatedly urged allies including Britain to tone down warlike rhetoric.
And ambassador Prystaiko today warned that the panic being caused by the West sounding the alarm could be playing into president Putin’s hands.
Responding to Mr Wallace’s Munich reference, the diplomat told BBC Radio 4’s Broadcasting House: “It’s not the best time for us to offend our partners in the world, reminding them of this act which actually not bought peace but the opposite, it bought war.
“There’s panic everywhere not just in people’s minds but in financial markets as well,” he added, warning it is “hurting the Ukrainian economy on sort of the same level as people leaving the embassy”.
Mr Wallace’s cabinet colleague Brandon Lewis sought to clarify the comment, suggesting the defence secretary was referring not to appeasement, but to the way in which hopes that peace could be secured by diplomatic means were dashed by a dictator set on war.
“It is very clear that what he was drawing on was the comparison between the diplomatic attempts in the run up to World War Two and the diplomatic attempts we are all putting in now,” Mr Lewis told Sky News’s Trevor Phillips on Sunday.
“We want a diplomatic outcome, we want a peaceful outcome to this but we do have to be cognisant of the fact that… there are 130,000 troops sitting right there on the border.
“With that kind of accumulation, there is always the possibility and the ability for Russia to move very, very swiftly and very quickly should it decide to do so, which obviously we hope they won’t.”
Mr Lewis said that an imminent incursion by Russia was “entirely possible”, and said the situation was currently in a “balancing act” between “what we hope will be a diplomatic outcome and the realistic possibility that something much more tragic could occur”.
Foreign secretary Liz Truss, who spoke on Saturday with US secretary of state Anthony Blinken, said there were “acute concerns that Russia may launch further military aggression against Ukraine in coming days”. London and Washington were agreed that Moscow will face “massive consequences for any invasion, including severe sanctions”, she said
Meanwhile, US sources attempted to play down reports that intelligence indicated the feared invasion will begin on Wednesday.
American ambassador to Nato Julianne Smith said: “We do not have information that Putin has definitively decided to go in.
“But we did want to warn both our allies, American citizens and Ukraine that we now believe that this attack could happen within days.”
Kyiv has insisted its airspace will remain open, after Dutch carrier KLM announced it is suspending flights to the Ukrainian capital.
Mr Wallace arrived back in the UK from Moscow in the early hours of Saturday before heading abroad with his family, but it was understood he had already accepted he would be leaving the holiday alone early rather than having cancelled it on arrival in the light of new developments with Russia.
British and US citizens have been told to leave Ukraine as soon as possible, and the small detachment of UK troops on training missions in the country are due to be withdrawn by the end of the weekend.
