UK Defense Minister: Russia Cannot Win in Ukraine

U.K. Defense Minister Grant Shapps is warning that the West must make sure Ukraine defeats Russia, or face the risk of attack from China and other dictatorships.

“Regimes who do not believe in democracy are watching” how the war plays out, and will launch attacks if they believe Western nations have “run out of puff,” Shapps said in an interview with The Telegraph on Thursday.

Shapps added that Britain is “living in more and more dangerous times,” and revealed that the country’s Army recruitment more than doubled last month as concerns grow about a potential confrontation with Moscow.

Shapps traveled this week to Washington, D.C., where he met with his U.S. counterpart, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and Secretary of State Antony Blinken, and while speaking from the nation’s capital insisted that the West must be “very, very clear that this is existential … it’s not just about Ukraine.”

“Everyone is watching – the Iranians are looking,” he told the Telegraph. “Do we just run out of puff, run out of patience and go away? China will be watching in the Indo-Pacific [and] North Korea will be watching.”

He added that it is “vitally important to our own national interests, and definitely to the Western civilized world, that Ukraine is successful in their own country.”

Shapps’ comments were made while the EU announced a new $54 billion aid package for Ukraine on Thursday to provide “long-term, predictable funding” while concerns mount over the future of support for Ukraine’s war effort from the United States.

NATO defense ministers are to meet next week, and Shapps said he will use the meeting to urge member states to commit to spending 2% of their gross domestic product on defense to ensure that “they are contributing to this global safety by making sure that a tyrant can’t win.”

“Regimes who do not believe in democracy are watching, and we need to demonstrate that the democratic path is the path that always wins,” he added.