Ukraine: Defence Relationships

Lord Balfe Excerpts

Thursday 9th June 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Balfe (Con)]

My Lords, in view of some of the things I am going to say, I would like to make it clear from the very beginning that I do condemn the Russian invasion. I think it was foolish and misplaced and, whatever else may be said, Putin clearly did not know what the result was going to be and seriously misjudged his own capacity.

I have been to Ukraine and to Crimea on several occasions, including before Crimea was taken over by the Russians. My conclusion on Ukraine is that there has been far too much western meddling. We have not managed to keep our hands off it for years, and we have not stood up to the Ukrainian Government. We have a Government who have conspicuously refused to implement the Minsk accords, and we have done little about it. Macron has done a bit, his predecessors did a bit and Merkel tried, but we have not had the Minsk accords implemented, and we have stood by while the Ukrainian Government have done such things as ban the Russian language—can you believe that they have banned the language of half of the population of the country?—and said virtually nothing about it.

I think Ukraine got itself into a position where it was being batted backwards and forwards by western-oriented policies. The real crunch came when Ukraine got rid of Yanukovych, because the country was a balancing act between the Party of Regions in the east and the parties in the west. It was never a clear dichotomy; it was never one area. I witnessed an election in Donetsk where over 90% of the votes were cast for the Party of Regions. I went round and questioned people, and all I heard was, “Well, it’s our party”. As one local person said to me, demonstrating some knowledge of British history, “It’s like the Valleys, you know. We all vote Regions; they all vote Labour”. I think there is a certain amount of truth in that.

When I used to lecture in European history, I used to say, quite truthfully, that you can rewrite your history but cannot rewrite your geography. The fact of the matter is that Ukraine is where it is, it is going to stay where it is, and we must devise a policy to dial down. There is far too much triumphalist rhetoric at the moment. What do we want to do with Russia? Do we actually want another Versailles? Are we going to suspend what is basically the rule of law in the West to confiscate assets? Of those assets in the West, are we going to distinguish between those of, say, Mr Bill Browder, who is supposedly our friend; Mr Roman Abramovich, who was our friend; and some people who have never been our friend? This is a slippery slope we are investing in if we start to suspend the rule of law so that we can have a rule of confiscation. We are almost back to the Versailles way of looking at the world, and it will not work. My friends in Russia—I do have some, and they are not at the top of the pile—are behind Putin. We have done what Hitler did in Britain: we have united the Russian people, and we need to be careful.

To close, I think we have to get a European peace conference, and we have to work out what we want. A justifiable line to draw is to say that we back the members of NATO and fully support Article 5. That is a line we can draw sensibly in the sand. We can say to the Russians, “So far, but no further” with the Article 5 guarantee. I have a lot of sympathy for the view of the noble Lord, Lord Liddle—I do not believe Labour Party Members are supposed to be my noble friends, so I will call him my ex-good friend—that we need to work with the Europeans. There is no way around that. Being in the same room as those Foreign Ministers is a great advantage. We need to get together with them; we will not get a peace in Europe without Germany and France. We need to get a common position—there is a European phrase for you—we need to get into the room, and we need to negotiate with the Russians from a position where they know that we mean it, but that what we mean does not humiliate them.