Ukraine

Baroness Fall Excerpts

Friday 25th October 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Fall (Con)]

My Lords, I pay tribute to the sacrifices that the people of Ukraine have made and continue to make for their freedoms since the invasion over two and a half years ago. I find their determination and courage humbling and a reminder of the values that we hold dear but are often complacent about.

I pay tribute too to the series of UK Governments for their sustained leadership and steadfast support for the people of Ukraine in meeting their military needs and addressing their humanitarian support; to those who welcomed Ukrainian families into their homes and communities; and to all in the West who give their support, with the higher price of bread or the cost of heating our homes. It has been a long time since we paid the price of peace in terms of our own personal sacrifices.

That realisation has also focused us in the West on our political values. It is because of Putin’s aggressive actions that we now have a reinvigorated and expanded NATO. Who would have thought that Finland, staunchly neutral for decades, would join NATO or indeed that Sweden would do so, proving that Putin’s strategy against NATO expansion has failed? He has effected the very thing that he most wished to avoid—and now there is the potential of Ukrainian membership of the EU too, an important step, along with the enlargement of NATO, towards marking a line in the sand for potential Russian aggression and whatever might happen down the line. In all the talk of peace, not least from President Zelensky, peace can only be as successful as the security guarantees that we place beside it. Otherwise, Putin will bank his battle gains, take his time and come back for more, as he did after Crimea.

We enter the most strategically difficult phase of the war in Ukraine off the back of a very tough year. A re-elected and reinvigorated Putin, supported by an economy on a war footing, strengthened through his alliance of rogue friends around North Korea and also China, has seen Russia on the offensive. Navalny’s death at the start of the year was a stark reminder of how those who oppose the regime are treated but also, in Navalny’s bravery, that Putin does not speak for all Russia. We hear that message loud and clear in the words of his widow.

Strategically, the worry is that Putin eyes up the longer term, hoping that western resolve will begin to wane as the cost of a third year of war focuses minds and inflationary pressures hover. It is a year of elections, especially when the USA has begun to question American resolve and the known unknown is: what happens if Trump wins? Will the Americans scale back their support or even just leave the war to Europe? What does that mean for us?

What can we do? We can keep making the argument, as my noble friends Lord Ahmad and Lord Cameron—the former Foreign Secretary—so skilfully did, that Ukraine is value for money for the Americans if we are intent on the West winning. To let Putin win would be the wrong thing not only for Ukraine but for Europe and the West. That means the USA, and it will play into the hands of those of our enemies—Iran, North Korea and China—who want the West to look weak and be weak. It is not a coincidence that Putin invaded after we left Afghanistan.

We are days from the US election, the result of which is critical to the future of Ukraine but also of Europe and the West. We cannot know what Putin will do next, with a militarised Russia selling its oil and gas east, eyeing its neighbours in near Russia and leveraging its influence widely as it chairs the BRICS this week. Russia’s ambition should not be underestimated but nor should Western resolve. Given the very fact that Putin sought a quick victory over Ukraine and today remains in a costly, intractable war, we must remember that although Ukraine is not appearing to win that war, nor is Putin. It falls to us in Europe to be prepared to step up. That means working with our European allies to prepare and to talk to the public, as the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Stirrup, said, about how and why we pay the price of peace. I hope that the Minister will pass on the resolve of this Chamber today.