No boots on the ground in Ukraine, says Cameron

Lord Cameron has ruled out Western troops being sent into Ukraine to deal with the continuing war with Russia.

The foreign secretary acknowledged that the "war will be lost if the allies don't step up" on the BBC's Ukrainecast podcast.

But asked whether Western nations should send troops into Ukraine, Lord Cameron replied "no".

He said "we don't want to give Putin a target like that... Fundamentally... this is a question of political will."

The former prime minister said the UK would use the "architecture of Nato" to deliver support to Ukraine but drew a distinction between a Nato mission "for Ukraine" as opposed to "in Ukraine".

He added: "I think it's not escalatory to say we're going to help this independent, sovereign country to fight off an aggressor and we're going to give it all the help we can in order to do that."

Britain has given Ukraine more than £7bn and trained more than 60,000 Ukrainian soldiers, in a programme started under Mr Cameron's tenure as PM.

Asked about fears the war could spill over the Ukrainian border, particularly in Poland and the Baltics, Lord Cameron gave assurances that Nato would intervene in those circumstances, under the organisation's Article 5 pledge that "an attack on one is an attack on all".

But the foreign secretary urged countries backing Ukraine to step up, perhaps by donating weapons.

"Some weapons have an expiration date," he said. "Much better to give those to Ukraine and they can use them than have to decommission them at home that actually costs you money."

The foreign secretary said he would not answer any questions on Israel-Gaza.