[Relevant documents:Sixth Report of the Defence Committee, The UK contribution to European Security, HC 520; Eighth Report of the House of Lords International Agreements Committee, UK-Ukraine 100 YearPartnership Agreement, HL Paper 102, and the Government response; First Report of the House of Lords International Agreements Committee, Scrutiny of InternationalAgreements: UK-Ukraine Credit Support Agreement for the Development of Ukraine’s DefenceCapabilities, HL Paper 16; First Report of the House of Lords International Relations and Defence Committee, Ukraine: a wake-upcall, HL Paper 10, and the Government response; First Report of the House of Lords European Affairs Committee of Session 2023–24, The Ukraine Effect:The impact of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on the UK–EU relationship, HL Paper 48, and the Governmentresponse; Oral evidence taken before the Foreign Affairs Committee and the Ukrainian Committee on ForeignPolicy and Inter-Parliamentary Cooperation on 25 November and 20 May, HC 916; Oral evidence taken before the Treasury Committee on 14 May 2024, Are the UK’s Russian financialsanctions working?, Session 2023–24, HC 604; and Oral evidence taken before the International Development Committee on 17 October 2023, FCDO anddisability-inclusive development, Session 2022–23, HC 1747.]
That this House again condemns President Putin’s war of aggression in Ukraine, which is nowin its fourth year of tragedy and destruction; condemns the atrocities committed by Russia in Ukraine, in particular the abduction of Ukrainian children; supports efforts to negotiate a durable and lasting peace agreement; asserts that this must reaffirm all Ukrainian sovereign territory as recognised in international law, including any occupied territories; believes that Ukraine’s sovereignty must be guaranteed by all parties including by all NATO nations and by the EU, to mirror Article V of the NATO Treaty; further believes that Ukraine must be free to sustain capability to deter a future Russian attack; also supports increased economic sanctions further to reduce Russian revenues from the export of oil and gas; and urges the Government and the UK’s allies to accelerate military support for Ukraine, and to release frozen Russian assets for the financing of increased military spending in Ukraine as soon as possible.
The motion stands in my name and those of many right hon. and hon. Members from across the House. I thank the Backbench Business Committee for providing time for this debate—the first full debate on Ukraine since February. The motion can be summarised very simply: Ukraine must and can win.
The Russia-Ukraine war was never some regional territorial dispute, as some would like to believe. It has now moved far beyond conventional geopolitics; it is not about territory and cannot be solved by Ukraine ceding territory to Russia. That is because it is an existential clash between competing visions of how global security should be organised, and indeed of the nature of our society. It is the result of a long-standing intellectual current within Russia: a mix of imperial nostalgia, nationalist theology, and a deliberate rejection of democracy and the Western rules-based order. Furthermore, that ideological framework is not fading but growing, adapting and continually finding new ways to justify the unjustifiable, both at home and abroad. Russia’s view of a desirable world order is one based on spheres of influence and the right of big countries to impose their will on smaller neighbours.
The hon. Gentleman is giving a great speech, and I agree with his points. With spy ships through the channel and submarines off the coast of Scotland, does he agree that it is vital for not only Ukraine but the rest of Europe that we work closely with the coalition of the willing throughout this conflict?
Of course I agree with that, and I will come back to how we work with our allies later.
The first thing we must understand is how the character of war has changed. In today’s war, everything is a weapon: disinformation, terrorism, sabotage, assassination, psychological manipulation, malign influence, cyber-attacks, economic warfare, menacing undersea cables—even energy, food and fertiliser are used as weapons. Let us also not forget that Russia has weaponised the abduction of Ukrainian children, which is just one of the atrocities that it inflicts on the occupied territories. I am sorry that the hon. Member for Paisley and Renfrewshire South (Johanna Baxter) cannot be here, but I hope that her cause will be taken up by someone else in the debate.
Make no mistake: we are today already under a sustained assault through a co-ordinated campaign that merges all these weapons and others, and these attacks are steadily increasing in audacity and seriousness. They are sometimes reported in the press but often downplayed by wishful Governments who are unwilling to acknowledge these attacks for what they are. They can appear to be isolated acts of espionage, sabotage or diversion, but they are not. They are elements of a systematic, strategic offensive designed to undermine public trust in our Governments and our democratic systems, to fragment our societies, to establish groups that destabilise our countries from within, and above all, to probe our defences and to find weaknesses to exploit further. This is a test of the resilience of our entire society.
This is hybrid warfare, or grey-zone warfare, but the term “total war” might be more accurate as a description. “The New Total War” is the apposite title of a recent book authored by the former Member for the Isle of Wight, Bob Seely. The Baltic and Nordic countries and Poland are currently the main targets, but so is the UK. Indeed, the UK is singled out by Russia as public enemy No. 1 because Russia sees the UK, quite rightly, as a bulwark against threats and coercion that intimidate some other countries.
Is the hon. Member aware that the Russian state is so deprived of military equipment currently that it is taking tanks out of museums to try to get them on to the battlefield?
That is certainly true, but the Russians are also depending more and more on what they produce in their factories rather than their legacy stock, which is making the war more and more expensive for them. They are not in an ideal position.
The initial Russian dash for Kyiv was disastrous for the Russian army. The Russians failed from day one to establish air superiority over Ukraine, which is effectively a no-fly zone for Russian military aircraft. Ukraine has succeeded in developing technology and tactics that make Russian attempts to advance extraordinarily costly. Ukraine’s ability to strike at Russian military and economic assets deep in Russia is increasing. There is absolutely nothing inevitable about a Russian victory over Ukraine. If we continue to sustain Ukraine and to undermine the Russian economy with sanctions, Russia will be forced to change its calculus for carrying on.
Nevertheless, Putin is projecting confidence that he is winning, but let us be clear: this is not because of the military situation but because of a lack of political will in so many NATO countries. If Putin wins, it is only because we let Putin win, as we let him win in Georgia, the Crimea and the Russian oblasts of eastern Ukraine before he embarked on the attempt to take Kyiv. He proved that we are soft, and his confidence is based on his continued belief that nothing has changed.
It has often been pointed out that the combined GDP of all NATO is vastly greater than Russia’s, so we should have nothing to fear, but that advantage only matters if we have the will to use this economic superiority to defeat Russia’s expansionist agenda. War is about nothing if it is not about willpower. Sadly, with a few notable exceptions such as the Baltic states and Poland, we have yet to demonstrate that willpower to win.
That is particularly due to the United States. First, the vacillation of President Biden and his fear of fuelling escalation gave Russia time to build up its war machine and exploit wider alliances. Now, the despicable and disastrous attitude of President Trump seems to offer Putin the opportunity to achieve everything he wants: the subjugation of Ukraine, the humiliation of NATO and the enlargement of the Russian sphere of influence at the expense of European security. Ironically, the effect of the Trump Administration’s 28-point peace plan has been to encourage Putin to keep the war going. That is because Trump appears ready to give President Putin everything he wants—Ukraine as a Russian vassal state. There is no incentive for Putin to stop this war under these circumstances, while the US is seeking to force Ukraine and Europe to accept peace at any price. It sometimes looks as if European resolve might also crumble. Trump thinks he is the master of the universe, but he is in fact being psychologically manipulated by Putin with flattery and—I make no bones about it—with bribes.
My right hon. Friend is right: the Russians have not already taken the town, although they say they have. The US ambassador to NATO pointed out recently that a snail crawling from the Russia border westwards would now be in the middle of Poland, had it left at the same time as the beginning of the invasion—that is how badly the Russians are doing militarily.
There is no breakthrough that would give Russia strategic military success, so Putin escalates by ramping up hybrid warfare on NATO states. He wants to move the focus of the war on to fresh battlefields. He attacks Ukrainian energy infrastructure. He could launch a miliary attack on a NATO member country using a form of warfare for which that country, unlike Ukraine, is not prepared. Such an attack on an ally would necessitate a response by the UK, if deterrence is to remain credible. It might even involve UK troops in Estonia, for example. Our troops are not prepared for the kind of drone warfare that we are seeing in Ukraine. If Russia did that, what would we do? I leave that question hanging in the air.
An attack could involve a missile attack on targets within the UK, for which we are equally unprepared, or on our offshore assets. Our allies in Germany, Poland and Finland take very seriously the real risk that Europe may be drawn into a more military confrontation with Russia, and a lot sooner than is comfortable to acknowledge.
What must we do in the face of this now obvious threat to our security? We must acknowledge and explain to our population that we are indeed at war now, and we must explain the nature of the hybrid threat. We must call out Russian hybrid attacks for what they are and we must devise robust responses, as well as increasing our own defences. Are these interceptions, and no more, a sufficient response?
We must constantly adapt the use of sanctions, realising that, like any weapon, Russia will devise countermeasures to evade them. We must, as a real priority, increase our military and economic support to Ukraine, however difficult that might be. We need to make it clear, by both our words and our actions, that Russia cannot win this war. I say to the Minister for the Armed Forces, who will respond to the debate, that it is not enough for us to repeat the mantra “for as long as it takes.” What does that mean? It has already taken far too long. We must commit to supporting Ukraine until Ukraine achieves victory, and soon, and that is possible.
I pay tribute to the hon. Member for Harwich and North Essex (Sir Bernard Jenkin) for securing the debate and for making such an eloquent speech—he made all the points that I was going to make in my speech, but I will make it nevertheless.
Today is 1,379 days since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, but let us not forget that Ukraine had already been at war with Russia for eight years. We all remember the rhetoric from the Kremlin: that Kyiv would fall in three days. Last week we heard from former Russian ground forces commander, Vladimir Chirkin, who made a rare criticism of the Kremlin from inside Russia. He said that Russia had not been prepared for its invasion of Ukraine. It is instructive to the House to quote him:
“we had the traditional underestimation of the opponent and overestimation of our own military”
as Russia had been buoyed by confidence from its five-day war in Georgia in 2008. He continued:
“During the first few weeks, we were taught a serious harsh lesson, and the former Defence Minister tried to find a face-saving exit from the situation, calling what was happening a ‘gesture of goodwill.’”
Chirkin also criticised the entire Russian intelligence community for telling the leadership that 70% of the Ukrainian population supported the invasion, which turned out to be entirely false. We know that well over 90% of Ukrainians—even in the east, in the south and in Crimea—support the continued sovereignty of Ukraine. That was one of the first times that a top Russian official has made such public criticism of Russia’s war effort—something that can lead to criminal charges in Russia.
Let us be under no illusion: in this country we are in our own war with Russia. Every day, the Russians undertake hybrid attacks against us, but here, unlike in Ukraine, where children are under direct threat of death and abduction from Russia, our children are under threat of online manipulation. Although our buildings are not under immediate threat of destruction by Russian drones, our borders are being tested by reconnaissance and dummy drones to assess our readiness for a full-scale war.
It is interesting that although we have all mounted pressure on the UK Government, and the Foreign Office in particular, to seize these assets and use their capital value—most of the assets are in cash now anyway—the answer has been a refusal. I understand the nervousness about resulting market instability, but the Government have said that the interest from the capital can be used, even though you cannot own the interest if you do not own the capital. We are dancing on the head of a pin. Would it not be better if the Government were clear, seized the capital once and for all, and regularised the use of that money, one way or another?
I agree. It is not just that the profits or interest from assets held here should be repurposed; we should look at how those assets are being managed, and maximise them, for use for Ukraine’s purposes. I will conclude my question to the Minister: will the United Kingdom be part of the reparations loan to Ukraine scheme, alongside the EU, if or when that comes about?
I will be brief on sanctions, as I have spoken about them many times before. More action is needed on two issues: we need to complete the sanction regime against the shadow fleet, and to sanction third-country imports to Russia. We also need to strengthen our enforcement in those areas. The shadow fleet is not just a way of Russia moving its fossil fuel exports and financing its illegal war; the unseaworthiness of the vessels is a danger to both people and the environment. In recent days, two Russian shadow fleet tankers went up in flames in the Turkish Black sea—again, that is a danger to people and to the ecosystem of the Black sea.
The shadow fleet is estimated to number about 630 vessels, and nearly all of them are old and in a poor state of repair. The recent large sanction packages from the US, EU and UK are welcome, but obviously the fleet evolves over time, and as many as 200 vessels are not yet sanctioned. We also need to use much more diplomatic muscle to ensure sanctions enforcement, in order to prevent the shadow fleet from not only docking, but using nearshore waters for repairs, refuelling and supply, which sometimes happens even in countries that have sanctioned the shadow fleet. Crippling the shadow fleet is crippling Russia.
The Government have moved on third-party sanctions. For instance, Kazakhstan has had a huge surge in imports of British luxury cars. UK automotive exports to Kazakhstan between January and April 2023 were 3,900% higher than in the same period in 2022. I was unsure whether there really was such a surge in interest in our vehicles in Kazakhstan, so I looked up the guidance on exporting to Kazakhstan from the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, and it states—I will be slightly long on this—that
If Members keep their contributions to under 10 minutes, we can get everybody in. I call the Father of the House.
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Putin and his henchmen are not politicians as we understand the word. They are intelligence officers and soldiers who have turned the tradecraft of the KGB into the statecraft of the Russian state, in the pursuit of building their world order and destroying ours. For that gang of autocrats, an independent Ukraine is not just inconvenient; they cannot tolerate Ukraine’s independence because it threatens the very foundations of their own idea of Russian identity. Their war in Ukraine is only part of a much larger war in their minds—a war that involves the United Kingdom and the rest of Europe, whether we like it or not. Yes, this war has come to us. I am reminded of the words of Leon Trotsky—and I use the word “you” advisedly as I quote him, Madam Deputy Speaker:
“You might not be interested in war, but war is interested in you.”
Putin and his henchmen have been saying for a long time that they are at war with us. In the past few weeks alone, expert commentators such as Fiona Hill, Eliza Manningham-Buller, the former director general of MI5, and Lord Robertson, the ex-Secretary-General of NATO, have all affirmed that Russia is at war with us—and yes, I mean Russia, not just Putin. This is because Putin’s gang of ideologues are skilled at exploiting the resentments of the Russian people in a highly controlled information environment, so that the people accept their lies and support what they have been told: that Russia is in some fight for its survival against the hostile west.
Some western policymakers find this reality unpalatable. They prefer the illusion that Putin might accept some compromise—some deal whereby Ukraine might trade land for peace. But let there be no mistake: that is not just wishful thinking; it is dangerous, because it both ignores the motive for Russia to wage this war and denies that Russia has already unleashed war against Europe and the United Kingdom.
But grey-zone warfare is by no means the only threat the UK faces. Our critical national infrastructure is exposed, particularly offshore. NATO and the UK lack comprehensive air defence. Just this week, Putin said Russia is “ready” for war with NATO. We have to be honest when we answer this question: how ready are we?
There is also a dangerous narrative taking hold that Ukraine is losing the war with Russia in Ukraine and that we must just accept this. That is wholly wrong. There are in fact detailed assessments, publicly available, which demonstrate that Russia cannot win militarily, so long as NATO countries continue to give military and financial support to Ukraine and economic sanctions against Russia are maintained and strengthened.
But something positive in Europe may finally be happening. Despite the tendency of European leaders to focus on the differences between them, Merz, Macron, our own Prime Minister and the leaders of NATO and the EU have shown remarkable unity. There is a realisation that a so-called peace agreed on Trump’s terms would not be peace at all. Putin would continue his campaign by other means. There would be little or no deterrence to discourage Putin from resuming military action on some bogus pretext at some future date. As Kaja Kallas, the European Union foreign policy chief, has explained:
“Russia has never truly had to come to terms with its brutal past or bear the consequences of its actions”.
She has argued that the nature of the Russian regime means that
“rewarding aggression will bring more war, not less”.
She is right: Putin will come back for more.
The democratic world cannot forget the lessons of history. The attitude of some is an eerie parallel of what Chamberlain said about Hitler’s annexation of the Czech Sudetenland, which he described as
“a quarrel in a faraway country between people of whom we know nothing.”
Let this House never forget that Russia signed the 2004 Budapest memorandum, which probits the use of military force in Ukraine. President Putin disregarded that undertaking when he annexed Crimea and then attacked eastern Ukraine. How many times do we need to learn this lesson? In Putin’s world, Russia recognises no international law, only its own absolute sovereignty, so a Russian signature on any treaty is not to be trusted, unless it can be externally guaranteed by people who have the necessary force.
Putin is already taunting the UK and NATO with hybrid war attacks. A Russian ship firing lasers at UK military aircraft in neutral airspace would have been unthinkable just a few years ago. This cannot just be ignored. Russia is testing NATO responses and mocking our slow pace of re-arming. The consequences of remaining passive would be dire for the credibility of NATO as a deterrent force. Letting Russia have its agenda would also increase Russia’s credibility with neutral countries, at the expense of NATO and our allies. They will see the EU and NATO as representing waning powers, unable to contain Russia as we did during the cold war.
The agreement on much tougher proposals at Geneva last week, while still engaging with Secretary of State Rubio, is a real achievement. The latest news that Putin has again refused to stop the war exposes him as the true aggressor. This is a war that he could instantly stop oh so easily. So long as Europe and NATO continue to support Ukraine, and Ukraine refuses to settle on Russian terms, then Putin will not agree to a ceasefire, until he realises that there is no diplomatic shortcut open to him.
The biggest risk we face is that Trump loses interest in his peace effort and withdraws support for Ukraine. However, there is already evidence that Trump’s power over the Congress is waning. Abandoning Ukraine would split US politics. We must hope that the US will also continue with intelligence support, but we should be ready for that to stop. If necessary, Europe should offer to pay for that intelligence, if that enables that intelligence support to be continued.
Settling for a fake peace on unsustainable Trump-Witkoff terms would be far worse. We in Europe have to accept that President Trump’s actions have demonstrated that he does not care about Ukraine, and his commitment to European security is, at best, ambiguous. The right plan is for European NATO to be ready to continue to support Ukrainian resistance to Russia’s demands whatever happens, to continue to support Ukraine’s military, and to help to finance Ukraine’s increasingly effective defence industries. That is why today’s motion refers to the release of the €140 billion Russian frozen assets in Europe, which is vital. Russia will then continue to suffer the astronomical attrition, on men and matériel, at vast financial cost. More intensive sanctions must also bite on their economy.
In truth, we can kid ourselves about the Russian economy, but it remains pretty resilient. However, sanctions have reduced foreign exchange earnings by some 20%—they come only from the export of oil and gas—and Russia’s domestic banks are now the only buyers of Russian Government bonds. This is not a long-term sustainable position for Russia. Secondary sanctions applied to the Russian shadow fleet, and to countries that enable that shadow fleet to exist, have made and can continue to make the export of oil and gas less and less profitable, or even loss-making for Russia.
Above all, we see the Russian army advancing so slowly in Ukraine, taking tiny areas of land at incredible human cost. We are seeing a land war that Russia cannot win. It has taken all of this year for Russia to take the small town of Pokrovsk, and at the cost of some 100,000 casualties.
What does that victory look like? Ukraine must be able to sustain itself as a secure and independent sovereign state, as part of the family of free and democratic nations. Victory is no threat to Russian territory or sovereignty—there is no plan or objective to topple President Putin—but this victory is the only way to prevent Russia from discrediting NATO and corroding the confidence that we democracies can and must use to prevent despots from degrading the global international order.
To help to achieve peace, we in the UK must accelerate our own war readiness, as the Defence Committee set out in its recent report. The noble Lord Robertson of Port Ellen, who oversaw the Government’s strategic defence review, recently remarked:
“We are under-prepared…we’re under attack and we’re not safe”.
Changing that does not simply mean strengthening our armed forces, although that is essential; it also means adapting a lot of things in our country so that we can survive and fight a war. That will be difficult, even painful, so the sooner we start, the better, because it is weakness that encourages Putin—the stronger we are, the less likely we are to be attacked.
I have been to Ukraine seven times since the start of the full-scale invasion, and not just to Kyiv or Lviv; I have travelled that great country in its time of greatest need, visiting Vinnytsia, Zhytomyr, Odesa, Chernihiv, Mykolaiv, Kherson oblast, Dnipro, Zaporizhzhia and my sister city of Kharkiv, which has had a relationship with Leeds since not long after the full-scale invasion began. I have seen at first hand the strength, courage and determination of Ukraine and the commitment to Ukrainian culture, language and identity.
I know that the Ukrainian people will never allow their identity to be subsumed by Russia. That is why the Russian practice of stealing Ukrainian children, Russifying them and then, when of age, sending them back to Ukraine to fight for Russia is so abhorrent. It is the worst, most dystopian war crime one can imagine. We need to ensure that Russia is prosecuted at the International Criminal Court for that. I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Paisley and Renfrewshire South (Johanna Baxter) for her amazing work in leading the APPG on that matter.
There is so much that we can say about the needs of Ukraine. I do not think we should use the debate to provide a running commentary on the war, or on the stalled peace talks, which Russia has disingenuously used to try to pursue its original war goals. I do want to talk about what could turn the dial.
As we all know, only maximum pressure on Russia and placing Ukraine in the strongest possible position will create a scenario where a ceasefire can be agreed. The twin approach of seizing Russian state assets for military aid and squeezing the Russian economy through the strongest possible sanctions regime may create those conditions, and it would certainly put Ukraine in a much stronger position than it is now.
We all know what assets are held in Euroclear, and we need those assets to be seized and repurposed for the self-defence of Ukraine. Euroclear has been holding about €200 billion belonging to Russia’s central bank, which is the majority of an estimated €260 billion in sovereign Russian assets held in the west. The full seizure of Russian assets is clearly proportional to the crimes committed by the Russian state against Ukraine, and any post-war settlement will incur huge reparations, so the seizure of assets is paying forward a long tradition of post-war reparations.
I welcome the news yesterday that the European Commission plans to move forward quickly with the reparations loan to Ukraine using frozen Russian assets, or an EU loan based on common borrowing, with a figure of €90 billion being reported, which is significant. That second option is due to some reservations from the Belgian Government, who host Euroclear in Brussels. I welcome Ursula von der Leyen’s statement that Ukraine must have “the means to defend” itself
“and take forward peace negotiations for a position of strength.”
I am sure the entire House agrees with that.
Publicly available information indicates that the United Kingdom has frozen private, corporate and Russian assets belonging to sanctioned individuals amounting to £28 billion. Will the Minister indicate the total value of sovereign Russian state assets currently frozen in the United Kingdom and whether the Government are prepared immediately to allocate those funds not subject to the approval of international partners, such as Euroclear assets, to support Ukraine during this difficult time?
“Russia is going to great lengths to circumvent sanctions, and continues to procure Western military, dual-use, and other critical goods through third countries, including beyond battlefield technologies. Russia relies on deceptive tactics, such as indirect shipping routes, falsification of the end-uses of goods and professional evasion networks.”
Kazakhstan might receive an order from a Russian importer for goods that are subject to UK sanctions, and so cannot be obtained directly in Russia from the UK. The Kazakh firm orders the goods from a UK supplier without informing it—or others involved, such as bankers, insurers and shippers—that the end user of the goods is Russia. The UK supplier exports the goods to the Kazakh firm, which exports them to Russia. That practice, and others like it, constitute the circumvention of sanctions. The risk of that happening may affect all parties in a supply chain.
That FCDO guidance is clearly helpful and instructive to anybody trading with Kazakhstan, or pretty much any other country neighbouring Russia that is not a member of NATO or the EU—or Ukraine, obviously. I know that the Minister is not from the Department for Business and Trade or the FCDO, but how many UK firms have had export licences revoked because they have traded with countries neighbouring Russia for the purposes of sanction evasion? My concern is that we have the guidance and know what is happening—we see a rise in exports of certain goods—but we are not taking action against individual companies. The answer would be instructive. Taking action would put us in a much stronger position when it comes to supporting Ukraine and trying to stymie the Russian economy.
To conclude, what we do in the next few months will decide the fate of Europe for the next 50 years. Will we scale up our support for Ukraine and ensure that the Ukrainian people have a democratic future in the European family, or will we slow-walk and slide slowly into our own military conflict with Russia? This is the time for us all to stand with Ukraine and ensure not just its future, but all our futures. Slava Ukraini!