Oral Answers to Questions

Boris Johnson Excerpts

Tuesday 2nd May 2023 Commons Chamber

[Mr Mitchell]

Progress is being made on women’s rights in Saudi Arabia, with 37% of all those employed now women, which is a higher level than in Morocco, which was the outlier in all this. I can tell her that our excellent embassy team in Riyadh is running leadership and skills development programmes to help women, particularly those in the cyber sector and those who engage in sport.

[Boris Johnson (Uxbridge and South Ruislip) (Con)]

This summer’s Vilnius summit will be an important test of NATO’s willingness to fulfil its long-standing promises to Ukraine. Does my right hon. Friend agree that it is now ludicrous to say that Ukraine’s NATO membership might be in some way provocative to Russia, since Putin has shown what he is willing to do when Ukraine is not a member of NATO and because Ukraine is not a member of NATO? Does he agree that it should therefore be the policy of the Government that Ukraine should be invited to make the necessary preparations to join as soon as possible under the rules, for the sake of clarity, stability and peace in Europe?

[James Cleverly]

Before I answer fully, I place on record the gratitude that I and others have for the leadership that my right hon. Friend showed at a vital point in time, ahead of the explicit, most recent escalation of aggression from Russia towards Ukraine. I know that Ukrainians hold him, as I do, in very high regard because of the decisions that were made.

NATO’s position on Ukraine is unambiguous—that the invitation has been put out for Ukraine to join NATO. I think it is incredibly important that that is not taken off the table. Of course, Russia’s aggression into Ukraine was the provocative action. Ukraine’s desire to join NATO was an entirely understandable defensive posture, because of that threat from the east.

Ukraine

Boris Johnson Excerpts

Monday 20th February 2023 Commons Chamber

[Boris Johnson (Uxbridge and South Ruislip) (Con)]

I pay tribute to the Foreign Secretary and the shadow Foreign Secretary for the quality of their speeches this afternoon.

In the year since Vladimir Putin launched his vicious and unnecessary war in Ukraine he has failed in almost all of his objectives. He has failed to take Kyiv. He has been sent scuttling from the Kharkiv region. He has been forced to evacuate Kherson. He has cost the lives of at least 60,000 Russian troops, and seen probably more than 100,000 injured. In the areas that he has occupied in Ukraine, he has created a new Flanders Fields of mud, trenches and blasted trees, where months of high-intensity shelling and bloodshed produced gains that could be measured in yards. He has been forced to such desperate expedients as sending to the front prisoners or terrified members of ethnic minorities recruited from remote provinces. As my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary pointed out in his powerful speech, he is running pitifully low on the technically advanced weaponry that he increasingly needs.

The seemingly irresistible force of the Russian military is breaking on the immoveable object of Ukrainian resistance. We in this House remain lost in admiration for the Ukrainians, for their heroism and for the continued inspiration that they are given by Volodymyr Zelensky. Yet it remains all too possible that Putin can still achieve something that he can call a victory. All that he needs to do is hang on to some piece of land that he has conquered and the signal will go around the world that aggression can pay, and that borders can be changed by force. All he needs to do to claim some kind of victory is to continue the cynical policy that he has followed since the first invasion of 2014, which the shadow Foreign Secretary rightly dwelt on, to use his foothold in Ukraine to destabilise the whole country.

Unless Putin is purged from Ukrainian territory, he will twist his knife in the wound. He will bide his time. He will wait until he can attack again. He will continue to menace the lives of the Georgians, the Moldovans—as the hon. Member for Slough (Mr Dhesi) rightly pointed out—the Balts, and everyone living in the periphery of the old Soviet empire. Unless he is finally defeated in Ukraine, Putin’s revanchist ambitions will be unchecked. That is why it is so crucial that we now accelerate our support for Ukraine and give them the tools to finish the job. We can all be proud of what successive Governments have done to help the Ukrainians whose armed forces continue to fight like lions. Indeed, it is they who deserve the credit, but we should be in no doubt that western equipment has been invaluable.

The story of the past 12 months is that, sooner or later, having exhausted all the other options, we give them what they need—from anti-tank missiles to HIMARS to tanks. If the choice is sooner or later, then, for heaven’s sake, let us give these weapons sooner. It is absurd for western supporters to keep pressing the Ukrainians, as they did at the Munich security conference, on how long this is going to take; the answer to that question is to a large extent determined by us.

It is a fine thing that we have finally promised tanks, but there is no conceivable ground for delay in getting them to Ukraine. We need those machines—Abrams, Challengers, Leopards—to make a real difference in real time in the next few weeks, not next year. It is admirable that we are proposing to train Ukrainian fighters to fly NATO fast jets—I hear the caution of my right hon. Friend the Member for Beckenham (Bob Stewart)—but it is curious that we are doing so before we have even taken the decision in principle to give them the planes. Let us cut to the chase and give them the planes too. If the House was in any doubt about the urgency of increasing our supply of equipment to the Ukrainians, it is becoming ever clearer that China is preparing to arm the Russians.

The Ukrainians have shown what they can do. They have the elan and the courage to sweep Putin from their lands, and they have the inestimable psychological advantage that they are fighting for hearth and home. With the right kit, including more long-range artillery, they can punch through the land bridge, cut off Crimea and deal a knockout blow to Putin’s plans, and they should not stop there.

It is time for us all to end our obfuscation about what we think of as a Ukrainian victory and what we think of as Ukraine. The Ukrainians must be helped to restore not just the borders of 24 February last year, but the 1991 borders on which they voted for independence. It was the west’s collective weakness in 2014, its effective acquiescence in Putin’s aggression, that helped to convince him that he could launch an attack last year. Whatever the good intentions of the Normandy format, we cannot say that it was a success; nor, frankly, can we say that the UK was right to absent ourselves from that format and from those discussions. We must not make that mistake again.

After a year of slaughter, we must do more collectively to show the people of Russia what they are losing by Putin’s misrule. We should tighten the sanctions on oil and gas wherever we can. I hear the arguments that hon. Members make about the need to use frozen assets and, whatever the complexities, I think the House deserves to hear those arguments properly thrashed out. We should be making it clear to Putin’s entire war machine, as well as to the regime in the Kremlin, that they will be held to account for their crimes, for the torture, rape, and indiscriminate killing they have sponsored. We must show them that the mills of justice grind slowly, but they grind small.

We should designate Russia a state sponsor of terrorism, placing that country where it now rightly belongs on the list that includes Cuba, North Korea and Syria—and, by the way, we should designate the infamous and bloodthirsty Wagner Group a foreign terrorist organisation. That is a badge that is now richly deserved and long overdue.

[Liam Byrne]

Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

[Boris Johnson]

I am just winding up.

Above all, we must give the Ukrainians what they need to win this war this year. By ensuring that Ukraine wins and Putin fails, we are making the best and most financially efficient investment in the long-term security of not just the Euro-Atlantic area, but the whole world. We all know that we in this country made a promise to Ukraine under the 1994 Budapest memorandum, when the Ukrainians gave up their vast nuclear arsenal. We said we would come to their aid in the event of an attack. Now is the time, finally, to do what we can to honour that promise. The Ukrainians are fighting not just for their freedom, but for the cause of freedom around the world. We should give them what they need, not next month, not next year, but now.