Ukraine

Lord Austin of Dudley Excerpts

Tuesday 18th March 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Alexander]

The hon. Gentleman’s point is a moot one given the circumstances in which the referendum took place. No one disputes the fact that there is a significant number of Russian speakers within Crimea, but it is a dangerous path to walk to suggest that the circumstances in which that referendum was conducted—in the shadow of Russian guns—in any way provide a free and fair expression of the will of the people of Crimea. Incidentally, it was also a flagrant breach of the Ukrainian constitution. Although it is important to recognise that Russia has legitimate interests, it is equally important to be clear and categoric in our condemnation of the referendum that took place at the weekend.

[Ian Austin (Dudley North) (Lab)]

Is it not also the case that just last year, opinion polls showed that only 23% of people in Crimea wanted to be part of Russia?

[Mr Alexander]

As my hon. Friend knows, in circumstances such as this I am often given to say that opinion polls come and go, but I can assure him that he is absolutely right in recognising the fact that the poll that took place this week cannot be taken as a serious reflection of the breadth of opinion across Crimea. As the Foreign Secretary said, the Tatars, who for understandable historical reasons have very deep anxieties about what the future holds, given the past experience of deportation to Siberia, largely boycotted the poll. There are clear instances of intimidation, and anything that would be considered free and fair is very far from what took place in Crimea this weekend.

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[Ian Austin (Dudley North) (Lab)]

The hon. Member for Aldershot (Sir Gerald Howarth) is completely right to call for much tougher action, because this is the first time since the end of the second world war that part of a sovereign European country has been annexed by another nation. He is also right to draw attention to the Budapest memorandum, because when we and the Americans signed it in 1994, we gave assurances to protect Ukraine’s territorial integrity and security.

The Prime Minister has said that Russia has committed a

“flagrant breach of international law”,

that what has happened is “unacceptable”, and that this is

“the most serious crisis in Europe this century.”

However, the European response, as the former Foreign Secretary, the right hon. and learned Member for Kensington (Sir Malcolm Rifkind), said earlier, has been absolutely pitiful. Limited measures on visas and assets have been announced for just 22 people, not a single one of whom is a member of Putin’s inner circle. European leaders might have wanted to send a signal without escalating the situation, but Putin’s response, which was to legitimise the outcome of the ludicrous and illegal referendum held over the weekend, was contemptuous.

Not content with moving Crimea to Russian time, Putin clearly wants to turn the clocks back completely to before the collapse of the Soviet Union. Putin—a former KGB colonel who regards the collapse of the iron curtain as a huge mistake—has made no secret of his belief that Russia should control former Soviet republics.

We have to ask ourselves what has actually changed for Putin, given that, to all intents and purposes, he is a brutal, cold war and Soviet-style dictator, terrorising his opponents at home, murdering them abroad, invading other countries and supporting terrorists such as Assad in conflicts elsewhere.

The only thing that does appear to have changed is that, as we saw with Syria, the west has become utterly impotent, weaker than ever before and unable—or unwilling—to stand up for its values, preferring instead to allow Russian oligarchs to use often ill-gotten gains to buy up huge swathes of London, our businesses, our football clubs and even our newspapers.

We should be pressing much more urgently for much more robust sanctions, such as further asset freezes and visa denials to members of the Duma who voted in favour of providing military support to Ukraine, thereby supporting Russia’s illegal invasion and continued occupation of Ukrainian sovereign territory.

We should seize the foreign currency assets of the Russian Government, Russia’s central bank and Russian state-owned companies. It is estimated that two thirds of the $56 billion moved out of Russia in 2012 were the proceeds of crimes, bribes to state officials and tax fraud. Let us make Putin’s elite cronies and financial backers choose between supporting his dictatorship at home and invasions abroad on the one hand and their wealth on the other. We should change the locks on their fancy apartments in Kensington, board up the mansions they have bought in the home counties, and empty their bank accounts to show them that the west will not tolerate the sort of brutality and corruption that passes for government and business in Putin’s Russia.

We should kick Russia out of the G8—I think that is absolutely clear. The summit due to be held in Sochi in June should be cancelled and Russia should be suspended from the Council of Europe. I welcome the Foreign Secretary’s earlier statement about military exports, but Russia’s membership of the World Trade Organisation should be suspended and existing trade negotiations cancelled.

Putin will obviously use western dependence on Russia’s state-owned and state-controlled energy companies to try to ward off tougher measures, so we must decrease that dependence in the long term and we should immediately explore how western energy imports can be diversified away from Russia.

The truth is that the west needs to decide which is more important: our values and commitment to democracy, freedom and the rule of law, or the dubious benefits of the west’s commercial relationships with Russia.

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[Sir Edward Leigh]

Absolutely.

[Ian Austin]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Sir Edward Leigh]

I must finish shortly as others want to get in.

An attack on one NATO country is an attack on all of them. Poland is a completely different state of affairs from Ukraine. As I have said, we must stop the power games of trying to detach Ukraine from Russia. It is not going to happen. Russia will not allow it to happen, any more than we would allow an integral part of what we consider to be important to our soul and our history to be detached from us. It is a dangerous game—[Interruption.] Well, somebody has to give an alternative point of view. There is no point in the House of Commons if we all agree with each other all the time. I am trying to explain the Russian point of view.

Encouraging Ukraine to join NATO is obviously absurd, but it is also extraordinarily dangerous to encourage Ukraine to join the EU. As I said, I am neither pro-Russia nor pro-Ukraine, and I am in favour—this may be a cliché—of peace and humanity. I want Ukraine to have a devolved system of administration so that the west can run itself, as can the east. Ideally if we can think in terms of free-trade areas and Ukraine having some sort of free-trade agreement with the EU, that is positive, sensible and acceptable to Russians. However, we should please not take any step further, because we will be indulging in extraordinarily dangerous power games.