It may be that Putin passes a law or makes a decree, but we have seen that the mass and volume of his armed forces numbers have not delivered for him the military triumph that he clearly anticipated was within his grasp when he embarked upon this illegal war. As the noble Lord will be aware, various reasons are hypothesised for that: many of these troops were untrained, many were provided with equipment not fit for purpose, and there seems to have been an absence of overall strategic command. So there are inherent weaknesses within the fundamental operational capacity of the Russian military. That has become evident as Ukraine has embarked on its activity to defend the country and seek to call Putin to account.

The noble Lord is right that these levels of activity are alarming but we must not be distracted and we must never lose sight of the fact that something wrong, illegal and dangerous has happened; somehow, we and our like-minded friends and allies have to respond to that by helping Ukraine. The gift that Putin would wish for is to think that anyone is getting bored or fed up or is now taking this all for granted. We are not—this country is not doing that, and neither are our European and NATO partners. We are resolved to stand shoulder to shoulder with Ukraine and do whatever it takes to assist in bringing this illegal invasion to an end.