The Chair of the Commons’ Defence Committee insisted NATO allies need to shelve their differences in order to properly respond to Russia’s ongoing hostile stance over Ukraine. Mr Ellwood suggested a conference similar to the one Allied partners held to thrash out a strategy against Adolf Hitler’s Nazi Germany could contribute to clarifying their position. Speaking to Sky News, the Tory MP said: “We need to get over this idea that we hide behind the excuse that because a nation is not in NATO, that they don’t deserve some form of serious support.
“Lybia, for example, Kosovo, Bosnia, Iraq, Afghanistan, these are all places we went in as NATO capability but they’re not members of NATO but there were security concerns.
“We need to stop hiding behind this, the West has become too risk-averse over the months, indeed the years.
“I’d even call for a Casablanca-type conference cause you’ve got Berlin, Paris, London, and Washington still looking at slightly different directions and that’s being exploited by Putin in Moscow.”
Asked to expand on what he meant by a “Casablanca-type conference”, the Conservative MP said: “This happened during the Second World War.
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“It was before you decided what you wanted to do, you made sure that your own team was pointing in the same direction.
“If you understand the bigger picture, if Putin is wanting to realign his country with China, sanctions will only help him persuade the Russian people, ‘look, our future is not with the West, it’s actually with China. We don’t need that Nord Stream 2 going across to Western Europe, we can have three of those with China.’
“And, of course, they have scant regard for human rights issues and equal disdain for the West.
“And that alliance would have a massive implication for geopolitical security over the next few decades.”
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“We must have no illusions that Russia could drag this out much longer in a brazen ploy to spend weeks more, if not months, subverting Ukraine and challenging Western unity.
Armed forces Minister James Heappey claimed on Thursday Moscow is continuing to prepare for a possible invasion and there have been bridges put across the Pripyat River near the Belarus-Ukraine border.
Russia says the West is gripped by hysteria and Russophobia, and Moscow has ridiculed claims by US security chiefs that an invasion of Ukraine is imminent.
The Russian defence ministry on Tuesday published footage to demonstrate it was returning some troops to base after exercises.