Gravesham MP Adam Holloway has continued to report from Ukraine, where he has hit back against criticism of his trip to the war-struck country.

A former soldier and foreign correspondent, Mr Holloway crossed over the border to a city 80 miles into Ukraine on Monday, and has reported on TV after speaking to Ukrainian officials, military personnel and residents.

Yesterday a spokesman for Number 10 said Mr Holloway should not have travelled to the area, and stressed government advice against travelling to Ukraine applied to everyone.

But speaking to GB News last night, the 56-year-old MP said he was well accustomed to ignoring Foreign Office advice.

Asked if he was in trouble with Number 10 he replied: "I truly don't know. All I've been doing is trying to maximise my time here to see and talk to as many people as possible. I think it's completely reasonable for Number 10 to expect members of parliament and the rest of the public to obey Foreign Office travel advice but I ignored it in Libya, I've ignored it in northern Iraq with the fight with Isis and I've ignored it quite a few times during the war in Afghanistan where we had officials, civil servants, senior people in the MOD telling us that being in Afghanistan was the most marvellous thing to be doing.

"There were several other MPs who did this, who took the trouble to go there and try and find out a bit of ground truth. We were actually able to say that this was not making a lot of sense. MPs can be outside the 'group-think' of the civil service sometimes, and I really think if you're going to stand up in parliament and talk about these things you've kind of got to know what's going on in the world, and because I've been a solider and a foreign correspondent - I was the ITN correspondent in Sarajevo during the siege for a bit - this is something I can do.

"I want to make a contribution, they haven't put me in the government so this is just one thing that I can do, to try to be useful and not a waste of rations."

Mr Holloway told the broadcaster that he had spoken to a general who travelled from Kiev, who had warned the situation was becoming increasingly grave as Russian units surrounded the capital.

He reported: "Today I've been meeting senior Ukranian officials, security officials and also a general who'd literally just driven out of Kiev - it had taken him a day.

"It seems that the situation there is becoming very difficult and that the city is soon to be encircled. He says that there are Russian special forces in the forests around the place, and I think he mentioned a 27 kilometer gap for people to drive in and out.

"Obviously I'm not there, I'm in the west of the country where the war hasn't come yet. There have been limited missile strikes on military facilities outside where I am, and then there's the regular drumbeat of air raid sirens and everyone has to go inside.

"It does seem according to the general that I met today that it's becoming a pretty decisive point. And the point that everybody here is making is that they're not asking us to come and fight this war for them because we know we can't do that but what they are asking for is the means to fight the war and to stop Kiev falling, because if Kiev falls that makes things very very difficult in the rest of this country.

"There's allegedly a 40 mile convoy of war machines, material of war - a massive logistic chain.

"We need to understand - what's happening here is very very very serious indeed, and what the Ukrainians have been saying to me - the consistent message throughout today has been that they'll do the fighting but they can't do it without proper air defence, without anti-tank weapons, and I know Britain and other countries have already provided them, but they say they need to be able to stop Russian air power."

Mr Holloway said the Ukranians were stressing the need for military equipment and that more action was needed from the west.

"They've got a shopping list of items which I won't go through, but it includes old planes - old Soviet aeroplanes from neighbouring countries and they talk about creating an anti-Putin alliance. Nobody here is against the Russian people, it doesn't seem to be about that, it seems to be about being against the kelptocracy, as they put it, of the oligarchs.

"And they also talk about, in the Second World War we had 'lend-lease' where the Americans lent money and leased weapons and machinery to us in the war but without actually entering the war, and that's the model I think that they want the west to adopt in this. As I say they'll do the fighting but what they say is they desperately need the materials.

"I don't know what we're doing because I've been here, and including travelling for the last three days or so. I know the Prime Minister is taking this incredibly seriously. What the west needs to do is just get together and have a think about how we deal with this situation, but I think the nub of it for these people is, if they're going to hold Kiev then they are going to need supplies from somewhere, and that somewhere has got to be a country around their border."

This morning, the mayor of Kherson in south Ukrine says the area is "completely surrounded" by Russian troop and predient Volodymyr Zelenskyy claims around 6,000 Russians have been killed since the invasion began.

US President Joe Biden has banned Russian planes in US airspace and said Vladimir Putin has "badly miscaluculated" when he thought he could make the free world bend to his menacing ways.