Defence Committee
9 June 2026
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Defence Committee House of Commons
00:12 - 03:08
Speaker 2
Order, order. I call to order today's House of Commons Defence Committee evidence session on Ukraine. Before we go into today's evidence session, I wanted to begin on behalf of the Defence Committee to send our sincere condolences to the family of Lance Corporal James Stewart Freeman, who was sadly killed in a training exercise on the 31st of May, and also to the families of Lieutenant Lily-Mae Fisher, Lieutenant Commander Chris Grayson, and Petty Officer Owen Green, who were tragically killed in the helicopter crash in Devon last week. We are deeply grateful for their service to our country. And I'm sure members would also like to join me in paying tribute to Sir Alex Younger, who passed away last week, and we all know that he was a great public servant whose contribution to our country will not be forgotten, and in fact he gave evidence to our committee during our recent inquiry, Defence in the Grey Zone.
So our thoughts and best wishes go out to his family. Moving on to today's evidence session, it's a one-off session on Ukraine where committee members felt that we needed to once again look into the details of the current conflict and thereafter. And I am very pleased to say that with us today we have an esteemed panel: Professor Michael Clarke, visiting professor at King's College London. A very warm welcome to yourself. And by the way, I know you're a visiting fellow also at the Royal College of Defence Studies, and some of the members like myself are RCDS graduates, so thank you very much for your contributions there as well.
We also have with us Professor Kristen Harkness. She is the director of the Institute for the Study of War and Strategy at the University of St Andrews. A warm welcome to yourself. And also with us today we have Orysia Lutsevych. She is the head of the Ukraine Forum at Chatham House.
Thank you very much for giving your valuable time to help inform the work of the Defence Committee on Ukraine. And without further ado, let's move straight onto the questioning. We've got a couple of hours in this session, and my request to members, given that there's quite a lot of ground to cover, maybe you would not want every question directed at every panelist, and also a request to panelists as well is if you could be as concise and as sharp as possible. No doubt you'll take on board that request. Onto Michelle Scrogham.
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