Ukraine: Defence Relationships

Baroness Meyer Excerpts

Thursday 9th June 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Meyer (Con)]

My Lords, this is a most dangerous moment—as dangerous as the Cuba crisis of 1962 and more dangerous than the crisis of 1983. It certainly calls for cool heads. But the request by some noble Lords to revisit the integrated review is a rush to judgment. A 100-day war is a short war. This is not the moment to draw definitive conclusions. We have yet to see, for example, the full impact of the weapons systems we and the Americans have sent to Ukraine. I am the last person to question military men on military matters, but when I hear the cry that the UK needs more tanks and a bigger Army, I note that Ukraine, with far fewer men and tanks, has managed to humiliate the Russian army around Kyiv and Kharkiv. Size is not everything, as I should know.

Nevertheless, there are important things to be said. As the noble Lord, Lord West, noted, the integrated review got it right: NATO is the foundation of our security; Russia is the most acute physical threat; the US is our most important ally; and we should work closely with the EU on matters of defence. Putin’s invasion of Ukraine does not require these principles to be revisited. Far from it—it reinforces them.

Putin will make Russia an awkward and aggressive European neighbour for years to come. This is what we must plan for: a strategy for the long run which is both political and military. The French President has urged that we should not seek to humiliate Putin in any peace deal. Macron misses the point. Putin has already humiliated himself. His invasion has strengthened NATO, opening the door to its further enlargement, rained down sanctions on Russia’s head and revealed the Russian army to be as brutal as the Nazis.

Today, the West has a short-term and a long-term challenge. The first is to provide Ukraine with sufficient support to repel the Russian invaders without provoking a third world war. The second is to answer the question: how does this end? There is already much disagreement on who decides the terms of any peace deal. There are even some, including in Westminster, who would sign an agreement with Putin over Ukrainian heads. Yet, no matter how tricky the issues, the unity of the West—of NATO and the EU—is essential. We do not need competition between the two organisations, driven by the French.

The EU talks very loudly and carries only a modest stick. It was ever thus. As Janan Ganesh put it the other day in the FT:

“What began as a cohesive Europe … has become progressively mushier. The spectrum of policies from Estonia to France, to say nothing of Hungary, has widened troublingly.”


The conundrum is this: long-term European peace and stability cannot be achieved without Russia, as Henry Kissinger noted a few weeks ago, but Putin’s atrocities have put him so beyond the pale that many will refuse to negotiate with him.

In the end, the West will have to decide whether the purpose of its support is to put Kyiv in the strongest possible negotiating position with Russia or to see Russia defeated on the battlefield. I ask my noble friend the Minister: is there yet a settled view in government on this question? In which forum are these matters discussed with allies, given that the full NATO membership is prone to leaks?