British defense secretary cancels trip to Odesa over security threat - media

UK Defense Secretary Grant Shapps had to scrap his visit to Odesa last week after UK intelligence reportedly warned Russia had become aware of his travel plans.

This was reported by the BBC, according to Ukrinform.

Shapps arrived in Ukraine on March 7, accompanied by chief of the defense staff, Adm Sir Tony Radakin, and a small team of British officials. But Shapps' onward journey was canceled abruptly at the last minute.

According to the Sunday Times, which had a reporter travelling with his delegation, the trip was called off after an intelligence update revealed the Kremlin's knowledge of it. It added that the strike in Odesa the previous day raised the threat level to Shapps's safety from substantial to critical.

"Putin has shown himself to be reckless, ruthless and careless. The fact that he came perilously close to essentially assassinating two western leaders, it doesn't matter whether that is deliberate or accidental. What the hell is he doing, and why the heck would the West allow him to do that kind of thing?" Shapps told the newspaper.

Shapps was due to travel to Odesa a day after a missile hit the city while the Ukrainian president and the Greek prime minister were visiting.

The UK defense ministry said that the visit was cancelled for "security reasons", and the defense secretary's visit to Ukraine “underscored the importance of this support in the face of Putin's aggression."

Earlier this week it emerged that an RAF plane carrying Shapps between the UK and Poland had its GPS signal jammed while flying close to Russian territory.

As Ukrinform reported, during his visit to Ukraine, Grant Shapps announced that the UK would allocate £325 million to purchase 10,000 cutting-edge drones for Ukraine.

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