UK defense secretary calls on Germany to give Ukraine long-range missiles with permission to strike Crimea

He stated this in an interview on Sky News, Ukrinform reports.

Shapps said that Britain considers Crimea a part of Ukraine, occupied by Russians, and his country allowed Ukraine to use the weapons provided by it to strike Russian targets in Crimea. In his opinion, partners should do the same.

"What I'd like to see is all of our partners, including Germany, who do have the facility to provide those longer-range weapons but don't allow them to be used in Crimea, which is part of Ukraine. I think those are the things which would need to happen first," Shapps said.

He called on other European countries to increase aid to Ukraine, stressing that the West is in a situation where there is a war for democracy and, at the same time, aid to Ukraine is being delayed.

Commenting on Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky's statement that Ukraine is "in a nonsense situation where the West is afraid that Russia will lose the war and it does not want Ukraine to lose it," Shapps recalled that "by delaying what we should be doing […] we are running the risk of doing exactly what President Zelensky is concerned about."

"We have to understand we are in an existential battle about the way that we run the world order about democracy itself," he said.

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