My Lords, I welcome this opportunity to have a comprehensive discussion on the current situation in Ukraine. I think many of your Lordships have felt that this has been a long time coming—perhaps this morning a very long time coming. It gives me enormous pleasure that we are all here. I know that many noble Lords, not least the noble Lord, Lord Robertson of Port Ellen, have been persistent in their efforts to secure this debate and I very much look forward to their thoughts on where we are going, what we and our allies need to be thinking about and what the future looks like.
My noble friend Lord Ahmad cannot be with us today because he is in New York supporting our position at the United Nations General Assembly, so I shall also close the debate. His absence is a loss to the Chamber, but he and I not only are good friends but share the same views on many of the challenges we shall discuss today.
To recap, as this House will know, Mr Putin’s so-called special military operation began on 24 February 2022. He aimed to remove the legitimate regime in Kyiv, subjugate the entire country and impose a pro-Kremlin puppet Government. Russia’s military commanders hoped this operation would conclude successfully within 72 hours; 574 days have since passed, and Mr Putin has failed to achieve any of his objectives.
I hope this whole House will pause and share a moment to praise the indomitable spirit of the Ukrainian armed forces and Ukraine’s population in the face of such brutality. The strain on their physical and mental health is acute but, despite this, Ukrainians remain resilient, optimistic and focused on victory. They launched their long-anticipated summer offensive in June. They have faced formidable opposition but, despite the invaders’ heavily fortified positions, they have relentlessly pressed forward, overcoming mines, artillery and drones. They have shown that Russia can be defeated with agile and enduring military support.
From the Benches of this House, none of us can have any notion of what the fighting must be like on the front line. The Ukrainians have shown amazing tenacity and immense courage in overcoming conditions more akin to the trenches of the Western Front in the First World War. As President Zelensky referred to in one of his recent nightly addresses, Ukraine is fighting World War I with drones. Tactically, it is slow going, but strategically it is evident that Russia is losing.
The Ukrainian offensive is inflicting serious pressure on Russia’s military. It is undermining Russian control and weakening morale in the Russian ranks. The Ukrainians have made steady progress against formidably defended Russian positions. We know this from intelligence sources and credible open-source domestic Russian debate. The Ukrainians are showing that Ukraine has the capability to defeat the Russian invasion, if we continue to provide it with the support to do so. As we have kept saying from the beginning, the Kremlin has achieved none of its military strategic objectives. At the last count, Russia has suffered well over 200,000 casualties, of whom we believe 60,000 have been killed, and more than 10,000 of its armoured vehicles have been destroyed. Russia is under pressure and its morale is weakening.
My Lords, I thank the Minister for her introduction to the debate. She apologised for the noble Lord, Lord Ahmad, not being here, but noble Lords know her personal commitment to this issue and her speech showed this. We have waited a long time for this debate, as I am sure my noble friend Lord Robertson will say, but it is a welcome opportunity to discuss some of the most serious issues facing us today.
I also place on record my thanks to the Ministry of Defence for the Privy Council briefings which I and others have been provided with. I have attended a number of these and they have been very informative; I am very grateful for the opportunity.
In the week that President Zelensky was in New York addressing fellow world leaders seeking to galvanise support—though the Foreign Secretary, not the Prime Minister, was there—it is worth reminding ourselves that it is now 18 months since Putin’s illegal invasion of Ukraine. The world has witnessed persistent resolve and patriotism, not just from the Ukraine President, whom we have all come to admire greatly, but also constantly from the Ukrainian people. When homes have been destroyed, they have stood up and fought. When their lives have been uprooted, they have stood up and fought. When they have lost friends and family, they have stood up and fought. Their bravery has been inspiring in the face of some of the dreadful atrocities that we have seen reported.
As much as this remains a story of courage and resilience that we admire hugely, I do not want us to romanticise that in any way at all. The scale of human tragedy and suffering is enormous. They have lost their homes, communities and loved ones. For so many, their lives will never be the same. Indeed, since the start of this invasion, the UN has recorded nearly 9,000 civilian deaths and a further 15,000 civilian injuries. The number of military deaths is almost impossible to calculate but must be hundreds of thousands. Nearly 6 million people have been internally displaced; nearly 8 million have been forced to flee to neighbouring countries such as Moldova and Poland. Others have had to go further afield—often, as we have seen in our own country, facing very difficult circumstances despite the families who have welcomed them.
My Lords, I too thank the Minister for her introduction to the debate and the noble Baroness, Lady Smith, for her powerful speech.
“Please, keep reporting the facts and not the propaganda.” So said Olena, staying in Ukraine, determined to support and fight for her homeland despite the awful privations Ukrainians have experienced in the past 19 months of this dreadful, illegal war perpetrated on them by a Russian leader who is out of control. Still they fight on, determined to win back the areas stolen from them by force.
In June 2022, I first met Ukrainians. I was contacted by a local doctor who had opened his home to a young family fleeing the horrors of war. He had organised a barbecue and invited friends and colleagues to bring their Ukrainian refugees together, so that they could meet up again, socialise and try to bring some sense of humanity, normality and friendship to their shattered lives. I was struck by the fact that they were almost all women and children, with just two teenage boys among them. Their husbands, fathers and brothers had stayed behind to fight, and of course no one knew then—as we do not know now—how the course of the war would unfold.
The women stood quietly together in that beautiful, peaceful Yorkshire Dales garden on a warm and sunny afternoon. The children played quietly together, all the time watching their mothers. I talked to them about their experiences through an interpreter; most of them then had little English. None could speak about their families left behind without tears pouring down their faces. They hugged each other in mutual support, given comfort in the knowledge that each was enduring the same pain.
One of the sponsors told me that, earlier, their Ukrainian family had been out walking in the countryside when a gun went off—not an unusual sound in the farming communities around there. Both the mother and her young child had thrown themselves immediately to the ground, fearing the worst. We can only imagine the horrors that they must have witnessed in their home country to cause that reaction.
My Lords, I too welcome this overdue opportunity to continue the debate on the courses and potential consequences of Russia’s illegal invasion of Ukraine and of the horrific war that has been raging there for over a year and a half.
It is clear that Ukraine has made some progress in pushing back the invading forces over recent months, but it is also clear that the conflict is nowhere near over. As I said in our debate on 9 February,
“offensive action to retake and hold ground is a very different proposition from mounting a defence against the kind of unco-ordinated and poorly led attack that we saw from Russian forces last summer”.—[Official Report, 9/2/23; col. 1364.]
The ability to manoeuvre sizeable units with concentrated firepower, to clear obstacles, both natural and manmade, and to co-ordinate different force elements are all significant challenges to any military, particularly in the absence of air superiority. Of course, the offensive forces need extensive logistical support, technical capabilities and, crucially, significant weapons stocks.
Meanwhile, both sides in this war have learned important tactical lessons from their respective successes and failures. Both sides have demonstrated their resolve to sustain their military efforts over the long term and both sides have reasons to hope for a successful outcome. In the case of Ukraine, sustained financial and logistic support from the West, combined with local innovation, adaptability and enormous courage, have shown the world that Russia is hard pressed just to sustain its illegal gains to date, let alone increase them. But the very things that have benefited Ukraine have also, paradoxically, given the Russian leadership reasons for hope. Their calculus is that a protracted campaign will become increasingly unpopular in the West and that the political will to sustain the financial and materiel costs will erode over time, with a consequent weakening of Ukraine's military ability to resist. Putin no doubt believes that a Republican—not just a Trump but any Republican—victory in next year’s American election could be very helpful in that regard.
My Lords, I thank the Government and the Minister for providing this debate. It has been a long time coming, but it is welcome none the less, and I congratulate her on the strong statement she has made this morning, and my noble friend, Lady Smith, and the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Stirrup, on their powerful speeches. It is right that a conflict such as this, which we are involved in, should be debated regularly in this House and Parliament.
If we, as a country, had been invaded by Russia, or indeed by any other country, we would be discussing it every day. If it was our Armed Forces battling for national survival, we would be bending every sinew to throw out the invader. We would have factories turning out ammunition, using every single weapon at our disposal, rallying every part of society, just in the same way that the Ukrainians are doing just now. We would make the sacrifices, pay the price, mobilise our people—all our strengths and all our military might. We have done it before, and we would do it again. We would defend our land, our territorial integrity, our borders, our people, and we would do it with tenacity and with national unity. It almost goes without saying. But we need, of course, to remember this: the Ukrainians are not simply fighting for themselves alone. They are fighting for us as well.
The aggression of Russia, and the gross violation of the United Nations charter, as the Deputy Prime Minister of this country said at the United Nations today, by a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council itself, is a threat to our way of life as well, and to our values, our right to live in a world of safety and security, and our territorial integrity. That is why we stand with the people of Ukraine and why we need to do much more, in our own interests as well as theirs.
Maybe on occasion we have lost sight of the stakes that are involved in this conflict. They are mighty. If Putin wins and destroys Ukraine, and makes even part of that country a colony of the Russian Federation, we lose as well. Why is that? First, the new rules of the world would be rewritten by the authoritarians— the Russians, the Chinese, the North Koreans and the Iranians. That would assuredly make for a very dark and uncomfortable world to live in. Secondly, as we know, Putin would not stop at Ukraine. Moldova, Kazakhstan and Armenia—which is already under attack, as we speak—would all feel the cold wind of an enervated Russian Federation and elite. A world where borders can be changed by military means at the whim of a single paranoid authoritarian would be a very chaotic world indeed.
My Lords, it is a great privilege to follow two speakers with whom I am in such complete agreement, and who have stated the reasons for supporting Ukraine so eloquently. I begin by declaring an interest because your Lordships’ European Affairs Committee has just begun a new inquiry into the implications of everything that is happening in Ukraine on the UK’s relationship with the European Union. I am not speaking on behalf of that committee, as we have only just begun our report, but I assure the House that what is said in this debate will be a valuable contribution to what we are putting our minds to between now and the end of the year.
The debate we held in this House the day after Russia launched its war of aggression against Ukraine in February 2022 was a memorable one. It was memorable because it demonstrated from the outset that there were going to be no party divisions in this country in our response to that aggression and our support for Ukraine. It was memorable too because that unity was based on a clear-eyed recognition that Russia’s aggression was not only a contravention of international rules as fundamental as those in the UN charter and the 1990 Paris accords on European security, but because it would directly threaten our own security should Russia succeed in its attempt to overthrow the Ukrainian state. Those fundamentals remain as true today as they were then, and the Government and opposition parties deserve credit for standing by them and taking effective action to sustain them.
What has changed since our debate on the first day after the aggression began is the realisation of Ukraine’s remarkable resilience and success in repelling an onslaught from apparently superior military capabilities. This is all the more reason to stand firm now, even if the costs in both military and economic terms are inevitably painful—even more so in human terms for the Ukrainians.
My Lords, I, too, am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Goldie, for introducing this debate and for the time that it gives us to rehearse the serious moral issues confronting us as a result of the conflict in Ukraine. Following the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, I echo my appreciation for the stirring comments from the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Stirrup, reminding us with great clarity of the issue of war crimes in this conflict, and the noble Lord, Lord Robertson, for reminding us how high the moral stakes are for us all.
I wish to place on record the importance of the ecclesial and religious dimensions of the political and military conflict in Ukraine, and the historic importance that religion has for the people of that land as the gateway of Christianity in the Orthodox tradition for this whole stretch of northern Europe, from the Baltic to the Black Sea.
The Ukrainian Orthodox Church has taken steps to assert its independence from the Russian Orthodox Church, and such actions should not be taken at face value. Short of applying for what it would term autocephaly, which is not within the Ukrainian Orthodox Church’s gift, there is little more that it can do to distance itself from the Russian Orthodox Church and its influence—which, at times, is malign, as an extension of Putin’s will.
At a time when Ukraine faces such an existential crisis and needs a response that meets all levels of its social and political life, criticism of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church—there has been some—can create unnecessary societal divisions, which can, arguably, weaken the morale that sustains Ukraine’s war effort.
At the same time, my Lords, we should be aware of the extent to which Russia has suppressed the religious freedom of Ukrainian citizens in occupied Ukraine with growing intensity since the war started last February. The US State Department’s report earlier this year on religious freedom noted:
My Lords, I too thank my noble friend the Minister for securing this debate, and I pay tribute to the contributions of my predecessors. I cannot opine in any way comparable to them on matters of defence, foreign policy or the geopolitical and strategic matters that have been mentioned today—I would not pretend to, nor detain your Lordships’ time on that.
I would like to briefly note the aspect that I dealt with as the Minister for Refugees, however, dealing with the Ukrainian problems. Prior to Putin’s illegal invasion of Ukraine, my only knowledge of the subject was that one of my grandparents stemmed from Ukraine. Had he not fled another evil Russian, the Tsar, at the time, I probably would not be here today, or at least not in this form. I could say that I am grateful to Tsar Nicholas for what he did, I suppose, because I have had the privilege and honour to be brought up in this country.
More seriously, my involvement in the refugee situation with Ukraine came about, to be honest with your Lordships, not because of a great love of me by the former Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who had taken the whip off me two years prior to that for disagreeing, but because I had some experience of dealing with refugees with the Syrian refugee programme, which I did when David Cameron was Prime Minister. I was grateful to Boris Johnson to be called on to do this job and help in this situation, and place that on record.
At the time, I went to Poland and various places surrounding Ukraine, to actually see what was happening on site with the refugees. The experiences I had will remain with me for the rest of my life. I saw stations perhaps the size of Waterloo in London, where every train coming in was full of young women and children—people who three or four days prior to that had been living a perfectly normal life like anyone else does. They were literally packed with one wheelie suitcase; the kids maybe had a toy to cuddle, but if you did not know the situation you would think it was just people on a weekend’s holiday or something like that. There were vast numbers of people. As I say, on the surface the appearance was very much that it could have been anywhere, in any street or any town, but beneath that surface there was shock and horror.
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We should be very clear: Russia could end this madness tomorrow. All it has to do is withdraw its forces. But Mr Putin would rather kill and maim civilians in pursuit of his vainglorious and futile quest. He knows that his military cannot win on the battlefield, so he is just trying to inflict the maximum amount of pain on innocent civilians. It is the mentality of a gangster. Recently, Russia conducted some extremely irresponsible attacks on the Danube ports—the first attacks within hundreds of metres of NATO’s border. We are closely monitoring reports of Russian drone fragments landing in Romania and are in close contact with our Romanian and other NATO allies.
Meanwhile, in another desperate attempt to distract from its failures, this month the Kremlin orchestrated regional sham elections in the Ukrainian oblasts of Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson, Zaporizhzhia and Crimea. I am sure the House will agree that this is a craven exercise in meaningless, blustering posture. As the Foreign Secretary pointed out, you cannot hold so-called elections in someone else’s country. I am afraid we can draw only one conclusion from Russia’s shameless behaviour. While Ukraine and its allies are vigorously seeking a diplomatic solution to the war—convening 42 states in Jeddah in July to discuss principles for peace—Russia is interested in neither finding a path to peace nor maintaining the stability of the world beyond.
On the contrary, the Kremlin would rather go begging for more weapons from its profoundly questionable fellow travellers, Iran and North Korea. We continue to urge Russia to stop this illegal war. The international community remains united behind Ukraine, with 29 countries signing a joint declaration pledging to negotiate long-term security commitments with Ukraine to help sustain its ability to defend itself.
The United Kingdom continues to stand united with Ukraine in the face of Russia’s naked and unprovoked aggression. The terms of any peace need to be right if it is to last, and we continue to support President Zelensky’s sound principles for a just and lasting peace. That peace depends on vanquishing the invader. Ours has been a pivotal contribution, second only to the United States.
Last year, we sent £2.3 billion in military support to Ukraine. This included hundreds of thousands of artillery rounds, air defence, anti-tank missiles and uncrewed aerial systems. As the first nation to send our tanks and Storm Shadow missiles, we helped to galvanise the international response. This July, at the NATO summit in Vilnius, the Prime Minister reinforced these efforts with a new tranche of support that included thousands of additional rounds for Challenger 2 tanks, more than 70 combat and logistic vehicles, a £50 million support package for equipment repair and the establishment of a new military rehabilitation centre. On top of this, we have seen increased contributions to the International Fund for Ukraine. To date, £782 million has been pledged and 10 contracts, worth £198 million, placed to assist Ukraine in critical areas such as air defence, electronic warfare, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance. The first deliveries arrived this summer.
Alongside weapons, we are the only country training the Ukrainian quartet of soldiers, sailors, aviators and marines. We have put more than 25,000 Ukrainian personnel through their paces since the start of the war and are on track to train up to 30,000 by the end of 2023. Nearly 1,000 Ukrainian marines have returned home after being trained by the Royal Marine and Army Commandos during a six-month UK programme. Meanwhile, the Royal Navy is training Ukrainian minesweeping crews, and we have commenced basic flying training for up to 20 Ukrainian pilots, which supports the recent decision by Denmark and the Netherlands to donate F16 jets.
However, defence is only one part of a whole-of-Government response to Ukraine. Helping that brave nation to meet its fiscal and humanitarian needs is as significant as giving it tanks and ammunition. The human cost of the war unleashed by Mr Putin is unimaginable. More than 17 million Ukrainians are in need right now, so the UK Government have committed £347 million of humanitarian support to Ukraine and the region since the full-scale invasion, making us one of the largest bilateral donors. We have also committed almost £130 million to rebuild Ukraine’s energy infrastructure, provided generators and hybrid solar units for hospitals, and funding so that Ukraine can make vital repairs. We recently announced support for the supply of fuel for Ukraine’s nuclear power plants, and, with winter just around the corner for the second time, we are now working to ensure that Ukraine will be prepared.
As noble Lords will be aware, the ramifications of Russia’s illegal activities are not confined to Ukraine; they have wider consequences. Between Russia withdrawing from the Black Sea grain initiative in July and the end of August, Russian strikes damaged or destroyed at least 18 port facilities, including warehouses, silos and grain elevators, primarily around the Danube river ports of Izmail and Reni. Declassified intelligence shows the Russian military attempted to target a cargo ship in the Black Sea with multiple missiles at the end of August. These are the tactics of an aggressor that knows its military cannot win on the battlefield, and so it looks for desperate ways to inflict pain on civilians. To deter Russian attacks on cargo vessels, the Prime Minister has announced a comprehensive MoD intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance capability operation in the Black Sea. It goes without saying that we urge Russia to immediately cease these abhorrent attacks and re-join the grain initiative.
Sanctions are also critical in frustrating Russian attempts to prosecute war and hinder its efforts at resupply. We have worked with our EU and G7 partners to inflict the deepest and most far-reaching package of sanctions ever imposed on a major economy. These sanctions are debilitating Russia’s economy and degrading funding for Mr Putin’s war. We estimate they have deprived Mr Putin’s regime of more than $400 billion, or roughly four-years’ worth of Russia’s post-invasion defence spending. The UK alone has sanctioned over 1,800 individuals and entities under the Russian sanctions regime, of which 1,600 were sanctioned since the full- scale invasion began, including 29 banks with global assets worth £1 trillion, 129 oligarchs with a combined net worth of over £145 billion, and over £20 billion-worth of UK-Russia trade. In July, we introduced legislation to reinforce our approach by enabling sanctions to remain in place until Russia pays for the damage it has caused in Ukraine.
This brings me to the importance of holding Russia to account for its actions. International law must be upheld, and infractions must be punished. Not only is the war in clear violation of the United Nations charter but the Prosecutor General’s Office of Ukraine has recorded more than 100,000 incidents of alleged war crimes, including murder, rape, torture and the deportation of children. Similarly, United Nations investigators and agencies are gathering evidence that shows that serious international crimes have been committed. Allegations of war crimes must be fully and fairly investigated by independent legal mechanisms. That is why, since the start of the war, we have provided £2 million in additional contributions to the International Criminal Court to increase its ability to collect evidence and support survivors. Together with the EU and the United States, we have established an Atrocity Crimes Advisory Group to support Ukraine’s own investigations and prosecutions.
Finally, Ukraine must be enabled to regenerate and recover from war, and its citizens given the means to rebuild their lives in peace. In its latest joint assessment, the World Bank calculated its total recovery and reconstruction needs at a staggering $411 billion, with $14 billion required for priority reconstruction and recovery investments in 2023. That is why, in the summer, the UK convened a recovery conference, attended by more than 1,000 public and private sector decision-makers, representing 59 states, 32 international organisations, over 500 businesses and 130 civil society organisations. Not only did the event raise more than $60 billion towards the reconstruction, including a new €50 billion EU facility, a further $3 billion of UK guarantees to World Bank lending and UK support of up to £240 million for humanitarian and early recovery assistance this year, but it allowed us to mobilise 600 companies, collectively worth more than $5.2 trillion, to sign up to the Ukraine Business Compact, signalling their intention to support the country’s recovery.
Once more, winter is inexorably approaching in Ukraine, and once again the resolve of the West will continue to be tested. Sadly, we judge that Mr Putin could well attempt to target Ukraine’s energy infrastructure as the weather gets colder. Vladimir Putin hopes that the world will come to accept his crimes, but the stain of his illegal deeds will never be erased. Earlier this month, the leaders of the G20 summit sent a message to Russia: all states must refrain from the threat or use of force to seek territorial acquisition. Those nations were clear. The only possible peace is one that is just, lasting and compatible with the United Nations charter. Russia is isolated and must withdraw.
In the meantime, the United Kingdom will continue to stand by Ukraine for as long as it takes. Its brave armed forces are doing much more than merely defending Ukraine’s right to exist as a sovereign and democratic country. They are defending the right of us all to live in freedom, and they need all the help they can get: help to fight, help to win, help to rebuild their lives, and help to protect their country so that they need never fear the jackboot of illegal invasion again. I beg to move.
It is right that, since the war began, there has been absolutely no wavering in our determination to confront Russia’s aggression and to pursue Putin’s crimes. As a country, as a Parliament and in your Lordships’ House, we remain constant and consistent in our support. That £2.3 billion of military support to Ukraine continues, both directly and alongside our NATO allies. At the same time, we must do all we can to shore up and maintain global support beyond NATO. Our efforts must be focused not just on the immediate military action but also on the reconstruction, as the noble Baroness referred to towards the end of her comments. Sanctions continue to limit Russia's capabilities, and they will always have the full support of these Benches. I am sure the Minister will agree that we should continue to examine what more can be done and to strengthen the monitoring of compliance with sanctions. We welcome that the Government is working with the EU to explore the repurposing of frozen assets. I appreciate that there are legal challenges. It would be helpful if the Minister was able to provide an update on the Government's response to those.
We know that sanctions can be a powerful and effective mechanism to hold the Putin regime to account, but they need to be implemented as part of a broader strategy in our relationship with Russia. For example, energy security underlines the importance of identifying risks in our own economy and infrastructure, but it also presents opportunities for reconstructing Ukraine, as illustrated by the G7+ clean energy partnership agreed in June. Three months later to the very day, is the Minister able to provide an update on the implementation of that partnership? I am particularly interested in how we have engaged with the private sector on reconstruction.
Are the Government considering a change to a more strategic response to our backing for Ukraine? All the individual announcements made are welcome, but does she think that it is worth considering the case for setting out a full action plan for military, economic and diplomatic support? That would help to give Ukraine confidence in a sustained stream of future supplies and support. Given the escalating pace of the war, if such an approach were taken, it could send an even stronger message to Putin that this support is unwavering and universal and that things will get worse, not better, for Russia.
Putin’s offensive following the winter stalemate in effect made little ground. We saw the months-long siege of Bakhmut; the town suffered, yet it is of little strategic value to the Russians, despite their intentions to take all of Donbas by March. Ukraine’s counter-offensive, which properly began in June, has faced similar difficulties. Stiff resistance, hardened Russian defensive positions, air superiority and minefields have led to very heavy losses. Ukrainian forces have made significant, if limited, advances, and this slow and steady progress is likely, at least for the foreseeable future, to be the pattern of this war. The support being given must be tailored to this reality to help the offensive.
The British Armed Forces training programmes for Ukrainian forces in the UK is a first-rate example of the type of backing that can really make a difference. We continue to welcome this and the additional support from our allies. Working in this way and assisting Ukraine in defending itself avoids depleting stockpiles and is more likely to succeed in ensuring sustained resolve from all parties. I know the Minister is aware of this issue, but have the Government also considered a new strategy, in collaboration with our NATO allies, to ensure that parts of our defence industry and MoD procurement are on an urgent operational footing? This would both support Ukraine for the long term and help rebuild UK stocks for any future conflict.
Finally, I emphasise that Labour's commitment to NATO is unshakeable. I am pleased that the noble Lord, Lord Robertson, a former secretary-general of NATO, which we in the Labour Party are very proud of, is here to contribute today. We share those values of democracy, freedom and peace; they are embedded in the founding treaty. Article 5 is the cornerstone of Labour’s commitment to Britain’s security. However, we remain concerned that the delays and MoD mismanagement in vital defence contracts such as Ajax armoured vehicles, E7 Wedgetail surveillance planes and a modern warfighting division undermine our UK capability to fulfil our full NATO obligations.
While NATO is boosting the size of its high readiness force from 40,000 to 300,000 following Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, UK Ministers plan to cut another 10,000 troops from the British Army, leaving it the smallest it has been since the Napoleonic era. That is in addition to the hollowing out that has already taken place across the Armed Forces over the last 13 years. This Government have cut our Armed Forces by over 40,000 troops. One in five ships have been removed from the Royal Navy—if the noble Lord, Lord West, was here, I am sure he would have further information on that. More than 200 aircraft have been taken out of RAF service in the last five years alone. Worryingly, satisfaction with service life has plunged to almost 40%. Given what we ask of our Armed Forces, they deserve better. A Labour Government will apply a NATO test to major defence programmes in Government to ensure our NATO commitments are fulfilled in full. Can the Minister inform your Lordships’ House today on how the Government will ensure that these obligations to our allies, in a time of European war and heightened security risk, will be met?
This is a period of uncertainty and instability and, ultimately, as a state we have a duty to rise to meet it, for our citizens but also for our allies. The Government have done this in the short term with the support provided for Ukraine, and have had, and will continue to have, our support throughout. But the longer-term management, whether looking forward or back, has not matched that. That leaves us in danger of not being able to meet our NATO obligations or our own expectations. In the context of Ukraine, this just is not enough.
The list of speakers for today’s debate shows expertise, experience and commitment from across the House, and I am confident we will all benefit and learn a lot from today’s contributions. Because the House of Commons is not sitting, today’s debate is being broadcast live on the parliament channel. That is not a frivolous point. I genuinely believe that these speeches and the Minister’s response are important for examining serious issues and for making our commitment to Ukraine public. They deserve a wider audience than those of us here in the Chamber.
I also hope that today’s proceedings and the contributions being made today will also be covered by the BBC. This is the last parliamentary debate to be covered by the veteran broadcaster, Mark D’Arcy, before his retirement. The role of the media, particularly those that have reported from bombed cities and the front line in this war, has been crucial in explaining the issues and showing us all the impact on the people of Ukraine. President Zelensky has broadcast direct into our homes and risen masterfully to a challenge that he could never have expected.
We all look forward to today’s debate and I look forward to the Minister's response at the end.
The UN has recognised that women, children and the marginalised in society are significantly more affected by such humanitarian crises and need a targeted response based on their pre-existing vulnerabilities. All over the world, where there is conflict, disabled people, women and children, LGBTI people and ethnic minorities are significantly more affected by war.
We have seen how neighbouring countries have come together to offer humanitarian aid to the hundreds of thousands—indeed millions—of refugees fleeing Ukraine. I am proud that, here in the UK, we have given wide support to many of them, as we heard from the Minister. I meet regularly with a group of Ukrainian women in Richmond, and I am always humbled by their dignity, resourcefulness and bravery. Their children have integrated quickly and easily into local schools and speak English with a slight Yorkshire accent. But we must not forget that their menfolk are still fighting on the front line and that we must continue to support them too.
In the comment and analysis section of the Observer on 16 September, the headline was “Now is No Time to Reduce Support for Ukraine”. It went on to warn of the cooling of that support in the US, especially from the Republicans, citing a CNN poll that indicated that
“51% of Americans believe the US has … done enough”,
while only 48% feel that it should do more. Military aid is beginning to slow, and I wonder how we expect Ukraine to win a war against a huge army with vast arrays of lethal hardware if we do not provide it with even better equipment. We have the means, and so do European countries and the US, to help it achieve its freedom from this aggressor.
A Georgian refugee living in Sweden told a friend of mine that wealthy Russians are buying up properties in neighbouring countries such as Armenia and Georgia as second homes, because they believe that, after Ukraine is annexed, other countries will be too, and that they will then have lovely holiday homes. They refuse to speak the native language in those countries and will speak only Russian in the shops, restaurants, town halls, et cetera. That makes the local people feel marginalised in their own country, and the Russians are pushing up property prices beyond the reach of the local population. That is what happens when you allow the Russians into your land. Of course, the same thing is happening here—maybe not to the same extent, but we must beware.
The same Observer article said:
“Those in the west who believed at the outset that this war could somehow be contained or ringfenced, and sought to keep their distance and limit involvement, must surely see now how wrong they were. Like a cancer, the conflict ineluctably metastasises around the globe. How much more avoidable suffering and divisiveness must there be, how much more institutional damage and international destabilisation, before the world finally realises that this is not just about Ukraine—it’s about everyone?”
In conclusion, when our Ukrainian friends eventually return to their own country, as many will, they will need our continued help and support as they rebuild their lives and their shattered country. I ask the Minister, as I was not able to hear her opening speech clearly, whether she would repeat the steps that are presently in place, here and now, to help in that reconstruction. We are working closely alongside other nations that are helping Ukraine; will she undertake to keep the House informed of progress in that area? This war will, sadly, drag on and on unless we provide the means for the Ukraine military to stop it. If not, we are talking about instability in the western world for as long as we exist. Ukraine’s fight is our fight.
All of this underlines the importance of a Western strategy for the support of Ukraine over the long term and, in particular, of Europe developing a sufficiently robust military and industrial capacity to underpin such support. This means substantially increased investment within Europe. Such investment has been talked about in a number of countries, but in many ways, it has not yet materialised. It will, of course, be difficult to deliver in the current economic circumstances, but a failure to deliver it will have far worse consequences, so we must sustain the pressure and set an example in this regard.
There are, I know, some that cling to the hope that an early political settlement can be reached in Ukraine and that this will obviate the need for such a long-term commitment. There are many who hope that such a settlement will then enable a return to the status quo ante bellum—that life can somehow return to normal. They are all of them deceived. They are deceived because it is not just a matter of bringing an end to the fighting. That in itself seems far off and will be difficult to achieve, but even when that moment does come, we will still be faced with a Russia that bears responsibility for a mountain of war crimes—a mountain that grows in size with every day. The consequences of this and of our responses to the situation will be profound.
During the 20th century, the international community went to great lengths to restrict, as far as possible, the suffering and destruction that are the inevitable consequences of war. In particular, the development of the law of armed conflict and international humanitarian law has imposed certain important constraints on competence. The use of force must be justified by the doctrine of military necessity. Attacks must never be directed against civilians. Unintended civilian harm must always be proportional to the anticipated military advantage, and appropriate care must be taken to spare the civilian population as much as is feasible.
It is certainly true that such requirements have and are still being ignored in some parts of the world, but until now, the major powers have held fast to the law and have in many cases taken or acquiesced to punitive action against transgressors. It is quite clear, however, that in Ukraine, Russia has made no attempt to comply with any of these legal requirements. Indeed, quite the contrary: it has made a bonfire of the rules. It is engaged in the deliberate and wholesale destruction of civilian infrastructure. It has employed methodical violence against large numbers of Ukrainian non-combatants. It has arbitrarily detained and in many instances executed civilians. It has tortured and raped civilians. It has abducted and in many cases tortured a great many Ukrainian children. There are at least 20,000 documented cases of abduction, and some Russian officials put the number as high as 700,000. The truth is probably somewhere between the two, but wherever it lies, it represents an appalling situation. These are all war crimes. They are not just down to the actions of a few rogue individuals; they are state- endorsed crimes that are being committed on an industrial scale.
In March this year, the International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant for Vladimir Putin on charges of the abduction of children—the first time such action has ever been taken against a Head of State of a UN P5 nation. Yet there is no prospect of Putin or any of his henchmen appearing in court. Russia has quite deliberately and unashamedly flouted the law of armed conflict in just about every respect. If its actions in this regard are, over time, allowed to pass unsanctioned, then the civilised world’s attempts to contain many of the worst effects of conflict will be in tatters.
President Zelensky has claimed that Ukraine is fighting not just to protect itself but to lessen the risks of illegal aggression elsewhere. He is of course right. That is one of the many powerful reasons why we must support his country in its struggle. But we must also accept, in dealing with a post-conflict Russia, that we will be fighting for the survival of the legal constraints on armed conflict. A failure in that struggle would signal a return to unrestrained savagery in warfare; that surely cannot be an acceptable outcome. There is, alas, no realistic prospect of prosecuting Putin and his accomplices, but the international community simply cannot resume its relations with him as if nothing had happened. It must accept at last that it is dealing not with a normal Government but, as I publicly asserted nine years ago, with a gangster regime—a regime that will tell any lie, betray any promise, and commit any crime in pursuit of what it sees as its interest. The West must respond accordingly. It must impose an appropriate cost on Russia.
That will inevitably have long-term consequences for international relations. There can be no return to the status quo ante bellum. I ask the Minister to confirm that the Government will continue the efforts that have already begun to document and publicise Russia’s abhorrent actions. I further ask what efforts they are making to encourage a long-term international strategy, most particularly amongst our European neighbours, to hold Russia to account for its many and manifold crimes. What consideration have they given to the long- term foreign policy and security consequences of such action?
The conflict in Ukraine has much further to run, but Ukraine will be successful if we hold our nerve and steel ourselves for the long haul. European nations, in particular, must up their efforts in security terms. So far, they have talked a good game; they now have to deliver. I do not exclude the UK from that stricture. Importantly, we must decide how to confront Russia over its heinous and premeditated crimes in Ukraine and what consequences that will have for European security in the years ahead. We have a responsibility not just to ourselves but to future generations to ensure the survival of the legal safeguards that our predecessors set on conflict, which were won only after untold bloodshed and are crucial if we are not to see a widespread return to such suffering.
It is true, of course, and worth putting on the positive side of this terrible calamity, that Putin grossly underestimated the unity of the western Europeans, whom he thought were fragmented and weak-willed. He saw some evidence of that in our weak response to the invasion of Crimea and in the shambolic exit from Afghanistan, but he then underestimated the link between the United States and Europe, which has been welded firm. He underestimated the attractions of NATO, with Finland newly in and Sweden on the brink of membership. His fictional so-called threat has multiplied. More than anything, he seriously underestimated the tenacity, grit, spirit and sheer determination of his fellow Slavs in Ukraine to defend and repel the naked aggression of their neighbouring state.
At the same time, we should not underestimate Vladimir Putin or the small group around him who tell him what he wants to hear. We should not underestimate his capacity for limitless cruelty against the Ukrainians, given the dreadful war crimes already committed, as outlined by the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Stirrup, and the forced abduction of children—for which the admirable International Criminal Court has now indicted him. We should not underestimate the pain that he is willing to inflict on his own people to pursue his grim vanity project, or his willingness to bear the huge, long-term damage to the Russian economy of an unnecessary war and the serious effects that sanctions are having on that economy. Hundreds and thousands of the young—the brightest and best of Russia—have left the country; it is a country weakened as a consequence.
We should not underestimate Vladimir Putin’s willingness to subordinate Russia to the Chinese and now, bizarrely, the North Koreans, as he takes risks such as opening the Northern Sea Route in the Arctic to soft-skinned tankers of oil, as he has done in recent days. We must not underestimate the enormous propaganda exercise that is being undertaken by the Kremlin, which uses disinformation, espionage, RT television, Sputnik radio and YouTube channels, all designed to undermine western support and encourage the global South countries to bend to it. It is already having an effect on European opinion. According to a recent opinion poll, up to 70% of Hungarians, Romanians and Bulgarians think that providing weapons to Ukraine provokes Russia and drags their own countries closer to the war.
We should not underestimate the efforts that Putin is making to win this conflict, dodging sanctions and smuggling in the components to create accurate missiles. I am told that Russia is producing 200 tanks and 2 million artillery shells a year—twice as many as it was producing before the conflict. Apparently, that exceeds western production by a factor of seven. Russian artillery shells cost $600 a piece, compared with $5,000 in the West—a lesson that we need to take on board. We should not underestimate his capacity for evil, because short of using nuclear weapons, which I think is unthinkable even for him, that capacity for evil may be boundless.
It was one man who took the decision to invade, and it will take one man to decide that enough is enough. One might seriously ask whether that is possible? It is a fair question, but we should always remember that, in 1989, when the Soviet Union decided that it was not winning in Afghanistan and that it was costing it lives and money, it simply folded its tents and came home. There were no off-ramps and no face-savers; it simply came home. Only a few weeks ago, President Xi Jinping of China ended his draconian lockdown without giving any notice to the population. At the same time, the Supreme Leader of Iran released thousands of women prisoners from jail. In both cases, the authoritarians could see that the ground was moving under them. Personal survival matters to them much more than saving face.
That is why it is imperative that Vladimir Putin gets the same message. He will get it by the West standing firm and resolute, with western leaders regularly and loudly telling their people what is at stake and why sacrifices are in their own personal interests and in our nation’s interest. As the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Stirrup, has said, it is therefore crucial that we supply the Ukrainians with all the weapons and ammunition that they need and when they need them. The delay in sending long-range missiles and artillery shells has hurt the counter-offensive, expectations for which were probably unrealistically high. With the Russians digging deep World War I-type trenches and sowing multi-level minefields, it was never going to be easy to recover the poisoned territory that they had taken. However, as we have seen in the past few days, it is not impossible, and progress is being made.
I say again that we need to guard against the fear and apprehension of escalation that we see in so many leaderships in Europe. Instead of the West being nervous of Russian escalation—something it has maxed-out already—we need to breed in the military hierarchy in Moscow the worry that, if they overdo what is being done in Ukraine, then an actual rather than a fictitious war with NATO might be the result; a war that they know they could only lose.
I saw a lot of the Russian military in my time, including being asked, after my time in NATO, to address the military chiefs club of the Russian Federation, an organisation of retired high-ranking officers. My impression was that they are very patriotic and conservative. The motherland is all important and, in the end, they are not prepared to risk it for a failing Putinesque adventure, especially one which has been so spectacularly unsuccessful, wasteful and humiliating.
The rebellion by Yevgeny Prigozhin showed the fraud of the war’s justification, which he called out, and the inner tensions in the authoritarian glasshouse. Only by ramping up our political pressure and maintaining targeting on Putin himself will the edifice crack and will the military, which has supported him until now, cavil at the damage that he is doing.
Sir Basil Liddell Hart, the greatest strategist of the Second World War, once memorably said that
“the issue of battle is usually decided in the minds of the opposing commanders, not in the bodies of their men”.
It was a salutary reminder that more than Prigozhin have doubts about this war. They need, with our united front, to notify Vladimir Putin that, just as in Afghanistan, the time to go home is now. It is our solemn duty to stand with those who are fighting for us in Ukraine. I quote President Zelensky:
“Human morality must win this war”.
The Ukrainians need to win, they must win, they have to win and we must ensure that they do win.
Part of our response has been the array of sanctions on exports to and imports from Russia. We must recognise that, with Russia showing no signs of relenting in its aggression, these sanctions will be needed for the foreseeable future, and should be progressively strengthened in both their scope and, most particularly, their implementation. We need a more structured frame- work for co-operation in these tasks with the European Union and its member states, whose actions on sanctions have far exceeded what might previously have been expected. I hope, in replying, that the Minister will be less reticent about the need for such a framework, such as we have already with the United States.
We also need to co-operate with the EU and its member states in the planning and first stages of Ukraine’s reconstruction. One conference, welcome though it was, is not enough. The European Union, within the ambit of negotiating Ukraine’s accession, which I believe will be decided at the end of this year, will inevitably be the largest donor in civil terms—I am not talking about military support. It is only in our interest to work closely with it and to avoid any scope for being played off against each other.
We also need to find ways of giving effect to our commitment in the NATO summit communiqué last July for non-EU members of NATO—we are one of those—to contribute positively to the strengthening of EU defence and security policies. Our score on that is pretty skimpy so far: a bid to join the mobility partnership and only after the US and Canada have already done so. Is there not more in the pipeline, or are we content for EU-NATO co-operation to proceed without our direct involvement? I think that would be a mistake.
While we need to recognise that we have so far been less successful than we might have hoped in enlisting what is now known as the global South in support of sanctions and reconstruction, we must not accept that shortfall as inevitable or irremediable. The hard fact is that there are many countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America which are put at risk by Putin riding roughshod over the UN charter and which will be even more at risk if Russia succeeds in its aggression. We should not be too hesitant about explaining those points, although we should do so in polite and non-aggressive terms. I suggest that we also need to recognise that, if we are to list more countries in the global South, more attention must be paid to and action taken on the priorities of those countries, most particularly on climate change, health, the handling of debt and the supply of essential foodstuffs.
It is not the time now, while the war is still raging, to address decisively Ukraine’s bid to join NATO, but we will need to in due course. Talk of separate, non-NATO security guarantees does not seem terribly convincing, given that their deterrent effect will inevitably be less than that of NATO membership. So, when the time comes—and it will come one day, but not now—we should be ready to give a positive response to Ukraine’s bid.
So much for some of the diplomatic challenges we face in this new Cold War which Russia triggered by its aggression. It could well last as long as the previous one, and we should be prepared for that. What we cannot afford to do is flinch from the prospect because it will bring some unwelcome military and economic burdens.
“In the first six months of the war, at least 20 religious figures were reported killed and another 15 kidnapped, and nearly 500 places of worship and religious facilities”
were “damaged, destroyed, or looted”—and the bombing of Odesa Cathedral has reinforced those shocking statistics.
This chilling aspect of the conflict in Ukraine points to a cultural cost of the conflict that will live on in the spiritual life of that nation, which goes so deep. In short, we should recognise that the weaponising of culture and religion is also the move of a morally degenerate aggressor.
Therefore, aid for the rebuilding of cultural and religious heritage and identity will be an important contribution to building a peaceful recovery for all that gives Ukrainian people the dignity, courage and faith that have moved the hearts of the international community.
The other thing that struck me—noting that my late father was in the Army in 1940; perhaps his parents would have been lucky to receive a postcard every three months—was that these women were predominantly on the phone, live, to their husbands and fathers who were fighting. I know that is quite obvious in this technological age, but I did not think of it in refugee terms. It of course has many good aspects—they knew who was safe and what was happening, However, when that phone went dead, which I saw a number of times, it was not just that they did not have a good signal; fear spread throughout that carriage and station. That is probably the life of refugees in the modern world—with mobile phones but barely the clothes they stand up in.
I shall not detain your Lordships very long, but I would like to talk about the Homes for Ukraine scheme. We were faced with the prospect of the former Prime Minister saying, in very good faith to his good friend Volodymyr Zelensky, as he put it to me, that we would take an uncapped number of refugees into this country. At the time, however, not much thought had gone into delivering a resettlement mechanism for them.
With the Syrian crisis, which was equally tragic in many ways, if not more so, we had sourced from a humanitarian point of view which families we wished to bring over here, based on the grounds of vulnerability, which the UNHCR did for us. Before they arrived, we pre-settled them into accommodation; we knew exactly where they were going, and which council and which flat they were going to go into. In this case, this was uncapped; we were not going to be able to select people on the grounds of vulnerability—they were all vulnerable, but in Syria we were able to look at medical and other traumatic cases.
The Homes for Ukraine scheme came out of trying to think laterally about another way to settle refugees, because without going into the asylum stories and everything else, there was no capacity in hotels or other ways to do it. The call to arms to the Great British public was absolutely phenomenal. We had about 210,000 people—admittedly, just registering on a database, but they did it—within two weeks of announcing it. The system itself had to be worked out; the visa system was totally unsuitable for this volume of refugees because it was based on a comparatively small number of visas. For example, why would we have a visa centre in Poland that opened more than one or two days a week? Before the war, there was no need for it. Getting the visas down from the chaos that there was—weeks of not hearing anything—to a reasonable 48 hours was at first a feat of volunteers from the rest of the Civil Service. At peak, we had a thousand people on special laptops processing visas. Fortunately, within a few weeks it became automated, on an app-based system, which helped tremendously.
Then there is the question of people who volunteer their homes. Are they real people? Are they criminals and paedophiles? Are they people who perhaps think it might be good for a few days but have not really thought about the consequences? I have always said with refugee policy that it brings out the best of people and the worst of people. The best of people are the people who work for NGOs, who offer to help in dangerous situations, voluntarily or not paid very much, and people in religious or other civil groups in the recipient country, but the worst of people are traffickers, pimps, child molesters and financial scammers. It is just a fact that all over the world that is the case with refugees. So we had to make sure that each property was properly inspected and that the hosts were not just doing it for money, cramming people into a small area or worse than that.
This is the upshot. The most recent figure published by the Home Office on the Homes for Ukraine scheme is that there have been 133,000 arrivals and 54,000 people have come under a very extended family reunion scheme. I think that is very good. I think it is the biggest movement of people into the UK since the Second World War. I am not saying it is perfect. There are a lot of faults, and various adaptations to the policy are needed for the future.
At first, we had the intention of not taking unaccompanied children, largely at the time because we did not have the facilities for them and because the Ukrainian Government did not want them moved away from countries nearby. I am very grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Dubs, who is with us here today. He pushed, kicked and cajoled me in the nicest and most gentlemanly way to do what I wanted to do in the first place, using him as an excuse. We came up with a compromise that was acceptable to the Ukrainian Government, and I hope that some children’s lives have been greatly enhanced as a result. The reality is that the Ukrainian Government had very mixed feelings about refugees. They were grateful for what we and other countries had done, but on the other hand they did not want to lose their population. They did not want them resettling in another country. These things are never very black and white.
My fear for the future is that the system of opening communities to refugees is forgotten about. When Ukraine is off the headlines and a large number of people have been settled, and hopefully many of them will move on or have moved on to employment, education and all the other things, the next crisis will happen in the world. It will happen. If it is not Syria or Afghanistan, it will be somewhere else. I want this to be a permanent mechanism to bring refugees into this country. That does not mean that there will be hundreds of thousands of volunteers all the time, but I believe a lot of people will do it and would be on a standing register. A lot of churches, synagogues and other groups will organise groups of their members, congregants et cetera to be on standby for this sort of thing. I ask the Minister— I know it is not exactly her field, but she covers so many things for the Government, particularly today—to pass on the message that this should be a standing system for welcoming refugees into people’s homes. I hope those lessons are learned and that when the Ukrainian crisis is over, which of course I hope is very soon, they are not forgotten.