Ukraine

A few weeks ago, I commissioned an independent inquiry into a series of events in Downing Street and the Cabinet Office as well as some other Whitehall Departments that may have constituted potential breaches of the covid regulations. That process has, quite properly, involved sharing information continuously with the Metropolitan police, so I welcome the Met’s decision to conduct its own investigation because I believe that will help to give the public the clarity they need and help to draw a line under matters. But I reassure the House and the country that I and the whole Government are focused 100% on dealing with the people’s priorities, including the UK’s leading role in protecting freedom around the world.

With permission, Mr Speaker, I will make a statement about the United Kingdom’s response to the situation in Ukraine. This winter, we have witnessed a spectacle that we hoped had been banished from our continent: a large and powerful country massing troops and tanks on the border of a neighbour with the obvious threat of invading. Russia has, of course, already attacked Ukraine, illegally annexing 10,000 square miles of her territory in 2014 and igniting a war in the Donbas region. Ukraine has scarcely known a day of peace ever since. Now, Ukraine faces the danger of a renewed invasion and, this time, the force arrayed on Ukraine’s frontier comprises over 100,000 troops—far bigger than anything that Russia has deployed against her before. If the worst happens and the destructive firepower of the Russian army were to engulf Ukraine’s towns and cities, I shudder to contemplate the tragedy that would ensue.

Ukrainians have every moral and legal right to defend their country, and I believe that their resistance would be dogged and tenacious and the bloodshed comparable to the first war in Chechnya, or Bosnia, or any other conflict that Europe has endured since 1945. No one would gain from such a catastrophe. Russia would create a wasteland in a country that, as she continuously reminds us, is composed of fellow Slavs, and Russia would never be able to call it peace.

For months, Britain has worked in lockstep with the United States and our allies across Europe to avoid such a disaster. We have sought to combine dialogue with deterrence, emphasising how a united western alliance would exact a forbidding price for any Russian incursion into Ukraine, including by imposing heavy economic sanctions. At the same time we stand ready, as we always have, to address any legitimate Russian concerns through honest diplomacy.

On 13 December, I spoke to President Putin, and I stressed that NATO had no thought of encircling or otherwise threatening his country, and that Russia enjoyed as much right as any other state to live in peace and security. But, as I said to him, Ukraine also enjoys an equal and symmetrical right to that of Russia, and I said that any attack on his neighbour would be followed by tougher sanctions against Russia, further steps to help Ukraine defend herself and an increased NATO presence to protect our allies on NATO’s eastern flank. The truth is that Russia’s goal is to keep NATO forces away from her borders, and if that is Russia’s goal, then invading Ukraine could scarcely be more counterproductive.

My right hon. Friends the Foreign and Defence Secretaries have both conveyed the same message to President Putin, and I am of course prepared and ready to speak to him again. Meanwhile, the American deputy Secretary of State met her Russian counterpart in Geneva on 10 January, and the NATO-Russia Council gathered two days later, as the House knows. The American Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, met the Russian Foreign Minister last Friday, and the US Administration have confirmed President Biden’s willingness to have another meeting with President Putin, continuing the bilateral dialogue they began last year.

But credible deterrence is the other side of the coin. Last night, I held a virtual meeting with President Biden, President Macron, Chancellor Scholz, President Duda, Prime Minister Draghi, Secretary-General Stoltenberg, President Michel and President von der Leyen. We agreed that we would respond in unison to any Russian attack on Ukraine—in unison—by imposing co-ordinated and severe economic sanctions heavier than anything we have done before against Russia, and we agreed on the necessity of finalising these measures as swiftly as possible in order to maximise their deterrent effect.

We in the UK will not hesitate to toughen our national sanctions against Russia in response to whatever President Putin may do, and the House will soon hear more on this from my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary. We have already declassified compelling intelligence exposing Russian intent to install a puppet regime in Ukraine, and we will continue to disclose any Russian use of cyber-attacks, false flag operations or disinformation.

Amid all these pressures, Ukraine asks for nothing except to be allowed to live in peace and to seek her own alliances, as every sovereign country has a right to do. Last week, the UK acted to strengthen Ukraine’s ability to defend her soil by supplying anti-armour missiles and deploying a small training team of British personnel, in addition to the work of Operation Orbital, which, as the House will know, has trained 21,000 Ukrainian troops since 2015. Yesterday, we took the responsible precaution of temporarily withdrawing some staff and dependants from the British embassy in Kyiv, though I emphasise that the embassy remains open and will continue to provide consular assistance for British nationals in Ukraine, and I am particularly grateful for the dedication of our ambassador in Kyiv, Melinda Simmons.

I commend our NATO allies for the steps they have taken and are taking to protect the eastern flank of the alliance. Denmark is sending a frigate to the Baltic and deploying four F-16s to Lithuania to join NATO’s long-standing air policing mission; France has expressed its readiness to send troops to Romania under NATO command; and the United States has raised the alert level of 8,500 combat troops, preparing to deploy them in Europe at short notice. The British Army leads the NATO battlegroup in Estonia, and if Russia invades Ukraine we would look to contribute to any new NATO deployments to protect our allies in Europe.

In every contact with Russia, the UK and our allies have stressed our unity and our adherence to vital points of principle. We cannot bargain away the vision of a Europe whole and free that emerged in those amazing years from 1989 to 1991, healing the division of our continent by the iron curtain. We will not reopen that divide by agreeing to overturn the European security order because Russia has placed a gun to Ukraine’s head, nor can we accept the doctrine implicit in Russian proposals that all states are sovereign but some are more sovereign than others.

The draft treaty published by Russia in December would divide our continent once again between free nations and countries whose foreign and defence policies are explicitly constrained by the Kremlin in ways that Russia would never accept for herself. More than half of Europe, including a dozen or more members of NATO and of the European Union, would be only partially sovereign and required to seek the Kremlin’s approval before inviting any military personnel from NATO countries on to their soil. The Czech Republic—at the very heart of Europe, hundreds of miles from Russia—would have to ask the Kremlin for permission if she wanted to invite a company of German infantry to join an exercise or even to help with flood defences.

There is nothing new about large and powerful nations using the threat of brute force to terrify reasonable people into giving way to otherwise completely unacceptable demands, but if President Putin were to choose the path of bloodshed and destruction, he must realise that it would be both tragic and futile. Nor should we allow him to believe that he could easily take some smaller portion of Ukraine to salami-slice, because the resistance will be ferocious.

Anyone who has been to Kyiv, as I have, and has stood by the wall of remembrance and studied the portraits of nearly 4,500 Ukrainians who have died in defence of their country since 2014—the total death toll stands in excess of 14,000—will know that the Ukrainians are determined to fight and have become steadily more skilled at guerrilla warfare. If Russia pursues this path, many Russian mothers’ sons will not be coming home. The response in the international community would be the same and the pain that will be inflicted on the Russian economy will be the same.

When I spoke to President Putin, I reminded him that at crucial moments in history, Britain and Russia have stood together. The only reason why both our countries are permanent members of the UN Security Council is the heroism of Soviet soldiers in the struggle against fascism, side by side with ourselves. I believe that all Russia’s fears could yet be allayed and we could find a path to mutual security through patient and principled diplomacy, provided that President Putin avoids the trap of starting a terrible war—a war that I believe would earn and deserve the condemnation of history. I commend this statement to the House.

I thank the Prime Minister for advance sight of his statement and am grateful to the Defence Secretary for keeping the Opposition informed of developments throughout the crisis.

When the Soviet Union collapsed, Britain, Russia and the United States made a solemn agreement with Ukraine: in exchange for its giving up nuclear powers and weapons, Ukraine’s security was to be guaranteed and its independence respected. Ukraine has kept its end of the deal; President Putin has not. His Russia has annexed Crimea, has supported separatist conflict in Donbas and has now amassed more than 100,000 troops on Ukraine’s borders.

These are repeated and unjustifiable acts of aggression, so Labour stands resolute in our support of Ukraine’s sovereignty, independence and territorial integrity. That was made clear when our shadow Foreign Secretary, my right hon. Friend the Member for Tottenham (Mr Lammy), and our shadow Defence Secretary, my right hon. Friend the Member for Wentworth and Dearne (John Healey), visited Kyiv a fortnight ago, and I made it clear to the Ukrainian ambassador when I met him last week.

This is not just a local dispute on the other side of the continent. It is an attempt by President Putin to turn back the clock, to re-establish Russian force as a means of dominance over parts of eastern Europe, and it is a direct threat to the anti-imperialist principle that sovereign nations are free to choose their own allies and their own way of life.

That is why it is crucial that we in this House are united in opposing Russian aggression. Let me be clear: the Labour party supports the steps that the Government have taken to bolster Ukraine’s ability to defend itself. We support international efforts to deter Russia from further aggression and the vital diplomatic efforts to de-escalate the situation.

I thank the right hon. and learned Gentleman and I am glad that he supports the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Ukraine. He is right to ask about the assurances that this country has given to Ukraine. I have repeatedly told Volodymyr Zelensky, as I told his predecessor, Petro Poroshenko, many times, that we stand four-square behind the independence and sovereignty of Ukraine and we always will. We have a hard-hitting package of sanctions ready to go. It would be fair to say that we want to see our European friends ready to deploy that package as soon as there were any incursion at all by Russia into Ukraine.

The right hon. and learned Gentleman asks what we are doing to track down Russian money in this country and in the City. As he knows, we are bringing forward measures for a register of beneficial interests. I do not think that any country in the world has taken tougher action against the Putin regime. It is this Government who brought in Magnitsky sanctions against all those involved in the poisoning of Alexei Navalny. It is this Government who got the world together—got 28 countries together—to protest against the poisoning in Salisbury. The world responded to that British lead by collectively expelling 153 diplomats around the world.

I am grateful for the general tenor of the right hon. and learned Gentleman’s comments and his support for NATO—belated though it may be from the Opposition Benches. I am grateful for it now. What I can tell him is that that same leadership in assembling a response to Russian aggression is being shown by the UK now, and it is absolutely vital that the west is united now, because our unity now will be much more effective in deterring any Russian aggression. That is what this Government will be pursuing in the days ahead.

As the Prime Minister articulates, the west is now regrouping, but the penny is also dropping: the threat of sanctions will not deter the Russian aggression, and a total or even partial invasion will have severe economic and security consequences felt right across Europe and beyond. Ukraine’s grain exports to Africa will be affected, global gas prices will be impacted and skyrocket, and where might an emboldened Russia turn to next? I ask the Government to liaise with the United States and consider a simpler and more effective option to deter this invasion by belatedly answering Ukraine’s call for help. It is not too late to mobilise a sizeable NATO presence in Ukraine, utilising the superior hard power that the alliance possesses to make Putin think twice about invading another European democracy.

I thank my right hon. Friend very much and I know that, emotionally, many people will share his view. He knows a great deal about Ukraine and the issues that that country faces. Of course, instinctively, many people would yearn to send active physical support in the form of NATO troops to Ukraine. I have to tell him that I do not believe that to be a likely prospect in the near term. Ukraine is not a member of NATO, but what we can do—and what we are doing—is send troops to support Ukraine. I have mentioned the training operations that we are conducting under Operation Orbital, as we have for the past six or seven years, training 21,000 Ukrainian troops. Of course we are now sending defensive weaponry, which I think is entirely appropriate. We have sent 2,000 anti-tank weapons to the Ukrainians and we join the Americans in that effort; as my right hon. Friend knows, the Americans have sent about $650 million-worth of military assistance to Ukraine. That is the vital thing to do to stiffen Ukrainian resistance, but the real deterrent right now is that package of economic sanctions. That is what will bite; that is what will hurt Putin; and that, I hope, is what will deter him.

I thank the Prime Minister for advance sight of his statement and join the Leader of the Opposition, the right hon. and learned Member for Holborn and St Pancras (Keir Starmer), in congratulating the Defence Secretary on making sure throughout that we have been kept informed of developments; it is most appreciated. It is important that all of us in this House stand together in solidarity with our friends in Ukraine in defence of their sovereignty.

We on the Scottish National party Benches share the deep concern over the escalation of tension, the prospect of military aggression and the threat to Ukraine’s sovereignty. Russia’s actions in recent weeks and months of amassing troops, tanks and heavy military equipment near the border of Ukraine are unacceptable. We continue to support, above all, measures to resolve the crisis through diplomacy, so will the Prime Minister provide reassurance that work to deliver a peaceful and diplomatic outcome remains this Government’s main priority? The threat of bloodshed on European soil is what is at stake.

We stand with the people of Ukraine and understand the fears and concerns of Ukrainians across these islands, many of whom live in the UK but have family in Ukraine. The bedrock of NATO as a defensive alliance remains the solidarity between its member states, and it is clear that we need that united alliance. It is becoming increasingly apparent that, should an incursion occur, what will be required is a tougher package of sanctions that are robust and have real, measurable impact.

We on the SNP Benches have called for co-ordinated economic sanctions against the Putin regime and the banning of Russia from the SWIFT—the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication—banking system. Can that be confirmed as on the table today? The measures must also include tougher action on Russian money laundering and include action by the Treasury to tackle the ongoing and improper use of Scottish limited partnerships, which have been used to funnel millions of pounds in dirty money. Without that, our credibility will lessen.

The Prime Minister raised the issue of Magnitsky, and let me say to him that it was cross-party support that led to these sanctions. He may well remember the meeting I had with him when he was Foreign Secretary to make sure that we worked collectively to deal with those threats. Will he also commit to introducing a transparent system of company registration and proper reform of Companies House?

Meanwhile, we all stand solidly with the people of Ukraine and urge the Government to continue efforts for diplomacy, as long as that is possible.

Again, I thank the right hon. Gentleman and echo many of his sentiments. He is completely right to say that we should pursue every possible diplomatic avenue, in every appropriate forum; whether it is the NATO-Russia Council, the UN, the OSCE, the G7 or the Normandy Format, we must follow every avenue. He is right to press on what we are doing to track “dirty Russian money”, for want of a better expression. That is why we have the unexplained wealth orders and why we are bringing in measures to have a register of beneficial interests.

The right hon. Gentleman asks about SWIFT and financial transactions across the world, and there is no doubt that that would be a very potent weapon. I am afraid it can only really be deployed with the assistance of the United States—though we are in discussions about that.

The House needs to understand that one of the big issues we all face in dealing with Ukraine and with Russia is the heavy dependence, of our European friends in particular, on Russian gas. It was clear in the conversations last night that in this era of high gas prices we are bumping up against that reality. The job of our diplomacy now is to persuade and encourage our friends to go as far as they can to sort this out and to come up with a tough package of economic sanctions, because that is what the situation requires.

My right hon. Friend will recall that when he was Foreign Secretary the Foreign Affairs Committee published a report entitled “Moscow’s Gold”, which was about dirty Russian money flowing through our system and the call for us to have various registers not only of ownership but of foreign agents operating within our system. We have had a reminder only a week ago of why that is so important. Will he tell me what he is doing to work with partners across Europe to make sure that we stand together and do not just act as a voice outside the Kremlin, but make sure that Putin’s acolytes, who have profited from his kleptocratic regime, act as voices inside the Kremlin telling him what he is risking? The impressive work that the Defence Secretary has done in helping to support our Ukrainian friends could be undermined if the Kremlin does not listen to the very real danger it faces today.

It is absolutely right that the best way to get attention in the Kremlin and in Moscow generally is to have sanctions that are directed at the individual—like Magnitsky sanctions, for instance; that is what we will be coming forward with—as well as sanctions directed at companies that are of crucial strategic Russian interest.

In Kyiv and in Kramatorsk last week, we met politicians and community leaders who will not only be worrying for the future of their country, but be fearful for their own lives. I have been saying for a very long time that the arguments that President Putin uses about Russian speakers in Ukraine are exactly the same as Adolf Hitler advanced over the Sudeten Germans in Czechoslovakia in the 1930s. I agree with the Chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee, the hon. Member for Tonbridge and Malling (Tom Tugendhat), that we need to see full implementation of the “Moscow’s Gold” report. I am sure there will be other sanctions coming—I do not quite understand why we have sanctioned only 25% of the people the American Government have already sanctioned. This House will stand ready alongside the Prime Minister if he needs, for instance, to introduce further legislation to seize Russian assets in the UK and to make sure that the unexplained wealth orders, which have worked in only three cases in the past four years, actually have an effect. We stand ready to stand by the Ukrainian people.

I thank the hon. Gentleman very much, and I think he is completely right in his analysis of Russian, and certainly Putin’s, intentions towards Ukraine. I am sure he has read the 5,000-word essay by Vladimir Putin about Ukraine and the origins of Russia. It is clear what the psychological and emotional wellsprings of his thinking are.

I am grateful for what the hon. Gentleman says on sanctions. As he knows, we are bringing forward a statutory instrument greatly to toughen up our ability to sanction people, and I hope he will support it.

President Putin has not even waited for the gas to start flowing through the Nord Stream 2 pipeline before exploiting the stranglehold that he has been building on the German economy. My right hon. Friend has already indicated that it may be difficult for Germany to impose severe sanctions against Russia if this invasion goes ahead, so does he not agree that it is vital from our security point of view that anyone with strong Russian or communist Chinese links should be kept well away from our own critical national infrastructure?

My right hon. Friend is completely right. That is why we brought in measures to protect our national security and our critical national infrastructure, and to ensure that we are able to stop investment that we think would be detrimental to our national security. I am afraid that he is also right about the German dependence on Russian gas. We have to be respectful of this, but the simple fact is that about 3% the UK’s gas supplies come from Russia, whereas about 36% of German energy needs come from Russian gas. Germany is in a very different position from us, and its sacrifice is potentially very large. We must hope that in the interest of peace it is willing to make that sacrifice.

I thank the Prime Minister for his statement. It is right that we stand united across the House to support Ukraine and to stand against Russian aggression, which we should remember has already resulted in over 13,000 casualties in the last few years. The Prime Minister has rightly talked about gas being an issue, particularly in Germany but also across central and eastern Europe. It could also impact this country, with the threat of increased gas prices at a time when families are already facing rocketing heating bills. Could I ask him to take further action on energy, as I did during the Russian invasion of Crimea? Alongside all the measures he rightly proposed in his statement, will he convene a summit of the G7 Energy Ministers, as we had back in 2014, to look at how we can improve short-term and medium-term energy security, protect consumers in this country and elsewhere against rocketing gas prices and give ourselves a much stronger hand in the face of Putin’s aggression?

I thank the right hon. Gentleman. By the way, I think that much of the work he did on renewables when he was in office was prescient and valuable for this country, and it has put us in a stronger position to resist the Russian gas blackmail. As I told the House just now, only 3% of our gas supplies come from Russia, but he is right about the spike in prices, which is why we are working together with President Biden and other colleagues to see what we can do to increase the supply of gas both to Europe and of course to this country.