Ben Wallace sits down to our interview just as the first reports of Russian troops entering Kyiv flash up online. Hearing that Ukraine’s citizens are told to throw Molotov cocktails at the invaders, the Defence Secretary says: ‘The nature of war is… everyone is involved.’
He then makes a sobering point on the human cost of the Kremlin’s invasion, referencing the Second World War’s Battle of Stalingrad which ended with an estimated two million casualties: ‘When every street corner is a killing zone, the casualty rates are astronomically high. Stalingrad is burned on the hearts of most Soviets, because of the total cost it took to take a city.’
While the former soldier says of Vladimir Putin’s assault on Kyiv – ‘it’s gonna cost him’ – pointing out that in an urban environment, ‘a petrol bomb into the back of a military Jeep is as effective as a missile’ – he admits the autocrat might still be in power for another decade.
Secretary of State for Defence Ben Wallace MP (centre), seen here in Olsztyn, Poland
Once Kyiv falls, the country is likely to descend into guerrilla warfare. ‘As we’ve seen in Iraq, it’s quite straightforward to invade a country – it’s incredibly hard to occupy a country of 44 million. What Putin has done today will lay the seeds for the ultimate end of Putin – whether it’s ten years, one year; The bodies can’t be hidden.
‘Every act of resistance is the foundation that will eventually lead to the failure of Putin.’
Speaking in the Ministry of Defence offices on Friday afternoon, having spent the day in back-to-back briefings, Wallace says a ‘deluded’ Putin has miscalculated and made a mistake in thinking Ukrainian people would welcome him with open arms.
But he warns that could make the war even more brutal, with Russia resorting to ‘total violence’.
‘What the last 48 hours has done is surprised Putin that Ukrainians are not waving flags of welcome, that he is not a liberator, which I think he convinced himself he was. In fact, he was despised.’
The Russian army is ‘run by an organisation whose view of the use of force and the rules of war are way out of anybody else’s normal parameters’, Wallace says. ‘The way they conducted themselves in Chechnya and other conflicts, they use total violence when they don’t get what they want.
‘We’ve already seen reports of shelling, striking of civilian properties and locations.’ Wallace says he was briefed that morning about an attack on a kindergarten.
He says Putin’s plan is to become a ‘disastrous tsar’, but that he must not be allowed to succeed. He is scathing about the world leaders who stood by when the Russian president annexed Crimea in 2014.
Mr Wallace says Putin’s (pictured) plan is to become a ‘disastrous tsar’, but that he must not be allowed to succeed
‘Collectively, the West after 2014 was guilty of appeasement. Collectively, the West is paying the price for letting a bully take.’
Wallace, 51, attacks French President Emmanuel Macron for having Putin as a ‘guest of honour’ at Jacques Chirac’s funeral in 2019. He recalls sitting not far behind the Russian leader and thinking that – after the Salisbury Novichok attacks – he shouldn’t be there.
‘It was not long after Salisbury, and we were in a cathedral. His minders stood on the balls of their feet. I thought, why is a man who murdered a British citizen sitting as one of the guest of honours in Western Europe?’
So what can be done now? At this stage, it appears, not much. The night before we meet, Ukraine’s president said his country had been left to fight alone. ‘We can’t do everything we want for Ukraine,’ Wallace says, pointing out the risk of a full-scale war with Russia if a Nato ally steps into Ukraine.
He dismisses calls from backbench Tory MPs to introduce a no-fly zone over Ukraine. In typical Wallace plain-speech, he says these suggestions are ‘crap’, adding: ‘Do you know how you impose it? You shoot down Russian jets – leading to war in Europe.’
Of his fellow Conservatives backing no-fly zones – including Defence Select Committee chairman Tobias Ellwood and former Cabinet Minister David Davis – Wallace says they ‘go around TV studio spouting this stuff, without any consequence for the world we have to live in’.
He is acutely aware how frightened people in the UK are of an escalation into a full-blown war with Russia, with its ‘huge stockpile’ of nuclear weapons which Putin has modernised. Asked what his message is to parents whose children ask them if we are heading towards a world war, the Minister says: ‘I’m afraid today, World War Three will last about an hour. Which is why we spend all our time avoiding World War Three.’
Ukrainian service members are seen at the site of a fighting with Russian raiding group in the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv
He says his three children are anxious about it and that the power of social media ‘makes us all frightened’. He adds: ‘Ukraine, which is actually a long way away, is beamed into our televisions, and on social media and TikTok. And I would say first of all, as I do with my children, we have to make sure we help regulate what they watch. As a Government and as a parent. Young minds are terribly anxious.’
He says he spoke to his children on the phone on Thursday but hasn’t seen them throughout the unfolding crisis. He had cancelled his half-term family holiday because the situation in Ukraine was rapidly deteriorating.
The next stage of the conflict will, Wallace believes, move to insurgency and guerrilla warfare. Will the UK help with this?
‘I think we’re taking it a phase at a time,’ he says. But he adds: ‘Britain – we stand up to bullies. Our job in the UK is that Putin must fail. He has to fail in challenging our values and our European security architecture. He has to fail for what he’s done in Ukraine. Whether he will fail next week, next month or in a decade, he has to fail.
‘It could take a decade. But the West is big enough, wealthy enough, sophisticated enough to pay that price if it needs to. And it should pay that price. Freedom isn’t free.’
Wallace says we are witnessing ‘a dawn of a new border of Europe’, the ‘ripples’ of which will arrive on Nato’s shores. Echoing his colleague, Foreign Secretary Liz Truss, Wallace says that Putin won’t stop at Ukraine – adding that as well as concern over the Baltic states, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan could be next.
‘Watch out,’ he tells those states, ‘because he doesn’t really think you are all independent either.’
Asked if the UK could use cyber attacks against Putin, he says: ‘There are lots of tactics against Putin, I’m not going to comment on each individual one,’ before adding that he means the options are ones to use against adversaries in general, not any specific one.
As for the West facing cyber attacks, Wallace says everyone should start taking more precautions. ‘We are all over-dependent’ on technology that leaves us open to attack, he warns.
Checking our virus software is up to date should become routine, he says. ‘We make sure our cars are serviced because we’re very dependent on that. We should do the same towards our telephones and our computers because we are very, very dependent on them. We should take it incredibly seriously.’
