My hon. Friend is right. We are talking about foreign ownership of property in our country, and that ought to command cross-party support. Just six or seven years ago, I would never have thought that this would feel like a partisan issue and be the basis of an Opposition day debate. It should have had time on the Floor, and we should have had an economic crime Bill years ago, but it takes the Opposition dragging the issue into the public domain to get a response.
To stand up to Putin in the long term, we need to stand up to Putinism, because Putin is not unique; he is the figurehead of an ideology that is being emulated by despots and dictators around the world. Putinism is imperialism. Putinism is authoritarianism. Putinism is ethno-nationalism. The Russian regime represents a fundamental geopolitical threat and we will not defeat the broader threat until we tackle the ideology that underlies it. Part of our message to Putin must be that his actions are a historic mistake.
This is not the first time that a Russian leader has waded into conflict as a result of his ideology. The same thing happened in East Berlin in 1953 when the USSR moved in to suppress riots. It happened in Hungary in 1956 when Russia sent in troops to invade the country as well as in Czechoslovakia in 1968 and in Afghanistan in 1979. None of those acts of aggression was a success in the long term for Russia, and civilians caught in the middle always pay a terrible price. In the invasion of Czechoslovakia, Russian soldiers strode in convinced that their invasion was liberating the Czech people from capitalism, but, when they are arrived, normal Czechs surrounded the invading forces and said, “Why are you here? You aren’t liberators—you are aggressors.” The Russian troops were deflated; the propaganda that they had been fed was a lie. The same thing will happen if Putin moves on the rest of Ukraine.
Only the Ukrainian people should have the freedom to determine their own futures. That fundamental belief in self-determination is shared across so many of our borders. It is a founding principle of so many of our closest allies and partners across this great continent and beyond it. The logic of democracy is why Putin will never win in the end. Any reward that he gains will be pyrrhic.