The Ukraine Effect (European Affairs Committee Report)

Baroness Nicholson of Winterbourne Excerpts

Thursday 21st November 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Nicholson of Winterbourne (Con)]

My Lords, it is an honour to serve on the European Affairs Committee, particularly under the exceptional chairmanship of the noble Lord, Lord Ricketts. The question on which our committee chose to focus was the rebuilding of the UK’s relationship with the European Union in the wake of the Russian invasion, now just over 1,000 days ago. The answer is, of course, clear: the relationship has steadily improved. We are now firmly and clearly on the same side as the European Union in our unyielding support of Ukraine, despite the enormous suffering that both sides and others have endured. Our relationship, therefore, has improved.

I declare two personal interests on Ukraine, both of which are voluntary. First, I am chair of AMAR International Charitable Foundation, where I have gained first-hand knowledge of the immense destruction by Russia of Ukrainian families. I have worked with some of the children and the mothers, who are destitute and frantic. I also have knowledge of the corruption which I encountered during my chairmanship of the Ukraine Britain Business Council, another voluntary organisation. The corruption has been intensified and deepened by the war because where Russia goes, corruption seems to grow. Noble Lords are therefore stating the obvious when they say that the rebuilding of Ukraine will not be easy at all.

Yet Ukraine has great friendships in its neighbourhood. Romania in particular has been magnificent: in Romania there are perhaps 50,000 or so Ukrainian husbandless mothers and their children. I am glad to say that, in Romania, there are still Ukrainian schools and even Ukrainian universities. The welcome has therefore been enormous. I pay great tribute to Romania, which has refused to put them into so-called refugee camps. Every single Ukrainian has been placed in a family, a monastery or a nunnery. It is absolutely magnificent, but it is not at all easy for those Ukrainian families themselves. The likelihood of them returning to their real homes in Kyiv is negligible, since many were bombed. On top of that, there is Poland, which has been magnificent, and other nations. Ukraine is therefore very fortunate where she is.

One wonders how the UK can help. First, the rebuilding of Ukraine, as has been said, will focus largely on business and industry. We in the Ukraine Britain Business Council already have some of the brightest, best and strongest that the UK can provide rebuilding the nation’s companies. Yet visiting Kyiv with some of those companies, it was painful to see the huge diminution of, and the enormity of the endless assault by Russia on, the capital city of Ukraine—which, of course, Russians believe is the capital city of their own nation. Ukrainians themselves have suffered this massive impact—it is huge—but the UK can help, mainly through our position as a partner member of the Council of Europe. We do not belong to the European Union, and we are a major member of NATO, but we are partners with Ukraine and the other nations mentioned in the Council of Europe. I suggest that, for Ukraine to enter the European Union, which is tough and difficult but is going to happen in perhaps eight or nine years, it will have to be via the classic route of the Copenhagen criteria.

One of the key elements of the Copenhagen criteria’s 10 rules is, of course, the fight against corruption. Despite the comments made by earlier speakers on Britain’s own corruption weak spots, it is nothing like the corruption to be found in Ukraine, which is truly enormous and has been so for a considerable time. We should pick up that as one of our key ways of assisting Ukraine to move closer to the European Union.

The other element is child trafficking. Ukraine, unnoticed by others, has been a major child trafficking country. All our work as a nation, and of the European Union at an integrity level, has been on child trafficking. That brought Romania into the European Union. We have done it once and we could do it again. I highly recommend that: it is in the Copenhagen criteria, and it is another element through which we could help.

Russia herself, the aggressor, has been drastically weakened and tragically harmed. Her relationship with her neighbourhood has almost shrivelled into nothing, including with Kazakhstan next door. A few of us recall that Russia had an enormously good tertiary education system: hundreds of thousands of students from different nations, both next door and as far away as Morocco, were having a much cheaper, high-level university education in Russia than they could obtain in western Europe. All those students had to be thrown out—they had to leave, it has all stopped—with the invasion. They poured over the border into Kazakhstan, for example. Some of our universities did their best to help, but with nothing like the enormity of the education they were gaining in Russia.

Inside Russia, supply chains are breaking. With Azerbaijan, for example, there are enormous difficulties in recovering and recreating supply chains for simple things such as fertiliser, which has made agricultural movement so difficult. So Russia herself is desperately damaged and we need to think ahead about how we can help her recover her economy later on.

The invasion was not unexpected—we should have been expecting it for a very long time. In Moldova, Russia took over Transnistria in 1991; then Georgia; and now Ukraine. There is a common denominator of moving ahead. The first Duma visit to Strasbourg took place in 1999. I chaired a dinner and asked them how they were getting on with the new world of democracy—to which they replied that the world had seen the destruction of the greatest empire ever known and that they were steadily rebuilding it. That we have been so slow to pick this up is distressing and disturbing. Above all else, this report should remind us of the need to remain vigilant and work to recover those former territories.

I thank the committee very much for allowing us to make this report and I look forward to the next steps.