Only a month ago, a Ukrainian soldier was killed by sniper fire at the spot where Gavin Williamson, the Defence Secretary, is now standing.

This is the front line of the West’s new war with Russia. Two hundred yards away, Russian-backed separatists are in position, their sniper rifles at the ready.

Protected by helmet and body armour, Mr Williamson is surveying the remains of a hospital, its walls bullet-riddled and the windows blown out. Separatist fighters had targeted it with mortars and machine gun fire from across the fields that now represent an illegal de facto border between Ukraine and Russian-occupied territory outside Marinka, a satellite town about three miles to the west of Donetsk.

Mr Williamson had deployed forward from the safety of Kiev, Ukraine’s capital city, to see for himself the effects of what he called Russia’s “brazen and reckless” act of initiating the conflict in the east of the country.

Britain will increase military support to its ally by sending Royal Marines later this year and increase the presence of Royal Navy patrols in the Black Sea in 2019. Odessa, Ukraine’s biggest port, located in the west of the country, is expected to come under pressure from the Russian Navy over the coming months as they try to effect an economic blockade.