LONDON, UK
British Defense Secretary Ben Wallace on Thursday confirmed that he was stepping down from his post in a letter to Prime Minister Rishi Sunak.
Wallace said last month he
wanted to resign after four years as defense minister and would quit as a
lawmaker at the next national election in order to pursue new
opportunities.
The 53-year-old former
British army captain was a key figure in leading the UK's response
to Russia's
invasion of Ukraine and has been seen by Kyiv as an important
ally.
Wallace was appointed defence
minister by former
Prime Minister Boris Johnson in 2019 after holding junior
ministerial posts in earlier governments.
The British government has
named former Energy Secretary Grant Shapps as Wallace's successor
In his official resignation
letter to Sunak, Wallace praised the progress made by the Defense Ministry and
urged the government to maintain its support of it.
"The Ministry of Defence
is back on the path to being once again world class with world class
people," he wrote.
"I know you agree with me
that we must not return to the days where Defence was viewed as a discretionary
spend by government and savings were achieved by hollowing out," he added.
Wallace saw himself as a
possible successor to NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg, but Stoltenberg's
contract was extended for a further year in light of the current
Russian threat to European security.
He is also a popular figure in
Ukraine because of his staunch support for Kyiv's fight against the Russian
invasion.
However, he did cause some
consternation in Kyiv with comments he made at the NATO summit
in Lithuania in July, in which he complained that Ukraine was not
showing enough gratitude for Western assistance.
His remarks, in which he said
Ukraine sometimes treated the West like an "Amazon" warehouse in
its demands for weapons, came in response to Ukrainian
President Volodymy Zelenskyy's frustration at not
being given a firm timetable for joining the Western military alliance.
He later said his remarks had
been "misrepresented."
"He has led by example.
His authority has inspired other countries to join in assisting Ukraine,"
Ukraine's Defense Minister Oleksiy Reznikov said on Thursday, adding that
British military aid "helped us to repel the first wave of Russian aggression,
to begin the rearmament of the (army) with NATO-style weapons and to
launch an offensive."
In Sunak's letter of response,
the prime minister lavished praise on Wallace.
"You have served our
country in three of the most demanding posts in government: defence secretary,
security minister and Northern Ireland minister," he wrote.
"I fully understand your
desire to step down after eight years of exacting ministerial duties.,"
Sunak wrote.
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