Ukraine

Lord Campbell-Savours Excerpts

Tuesday 18th March 2014 Lords Chamber

[The Senior Minister of State, Department for Communities and Local Government & Foreign and Commonwealth Office (Baroness Warsi) (Con)]

My Lords, these are momentous times in Ukraine, where ordinary citizens have made a stand against a corrupt regime that sought to trample on their aspirations for a European future. That future is threatened by the cynical and artificial stimulation of ethnic-based tensions as a cover for an illegal attempt to undermine the sovereignty of Ukraine. Our national interest is clear in Ukraine being able to make its own decisions, the upholding of international law and the UN charter, and the prevention of further violations of the sovereignty of independent European states in this way.

Noble Lords will recall that massive demonstrations began in Kiev in November in response to the unexpected announcement of the then President, Viktor Yanukovych, that he would not sign the EU association agreement. After various attempts to disperse the demonstrations, Yanukovych resorted to extreme measures in the week beginning 17 February, when more than 80 people were killed and more than 600 injured. In the wake of such bloodshed, the EU brokered a deal between Mr Yanukovych and the opposition to end the violence on 21 February. However, that same night Mr Yanukovych fled Kiev, thus neglecting his very first responsibility under the deal: to sign within 48 hours a law to return to the 2004 constitution. We are clear that under the extraordinary circumstances of a President abandoning his post, the Ukrainian parliament—the Rada—had the right to appoint an interim President and Government, as laid down in Ukrainian constitutional law.

The majority of the international community, including the UK, resolved to put all efforts into helping to quickly stabilise Ukraine, but unfortunately others sought to exploit the situation for their own ends. On 1 March, Russia’s parliament approved President Vladimir Putin’s request to use Russian forces in Ukraine. Within days, Russian troops besieged Ukrainian forces in Crimea. The Government continue to make clear their utter condemnation of Russia’s invasion, the violation of the territorial integrity of Ukraine and the cynical campaign of misinformation Russia conducted as a cover for its illegal actions in Crimea. Two days after Russian forces took control, Crimea’s parliament asked to join Russia and announced that the matter would be put to a referendum just 10 days later.

On Friday, my right honourable friend the Foreign Secretary met US Secretary of State John Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov before their bilateral talks in London. Russia was presented with a series of proposals to de-escalate the crisis and to address the situation in Crimea. After six hours of talks, Russia rebuffed those efforts. On Saturday 15 March, the UN Security Council voted on a resolution condemning the referendum as unconstitutional and illegitimate, which was co-sponsored by 42 nations. Russia was completely isolated in vetoing the text, while 13 members of the Security Council voted in favour and China abstained.

The Crimean referendum was indeed held on Sunday 16 March. The UK condemns the fact that the referendum has taken place in breach of the Ukrainian constitution and in defiance of calls by the international community for restraint. In common with the majority of the international community, we recognise neither the referendum nor its outcome. The referendum was clearly illegal under the Ukrainian constitution, which states that the autonomous republic of Crimea is an integral constituent part of Ukraine, that issues related to its authority must be resolved within the provisions of the constitution and that only the Ukrainian parliament has the right to call such a referendum.

Nor can the vote be considered to be free or fair. Crimea is occupied by an estimated 30,000 Russian troops and the meeting of the Crimean parliament that announced the referendum was itself controlled by unidentified armed gunmen and took place behind locked doors. The referendum took place at 10 days’ notice without the leaders of Ukraine being able to visit Crimea and without meeting any of the OSCE standards for democratic elections. Furthermore, the ballot paper asks the people of Crimea to decide either to become part of the Russian Federation or to revert to the highly ambiguous 1992 constitution, which would give the Crimean parliament the power to decide to join Russia. There was no option on the ballot paper for those who support the status quo and want Crimea to stay as it is—an autonomous region of Ukraine. The House should be in no doubt that this was a mockery of democratic practice.

The Government have played an active role in seeking a peaceful resolution to the crisis that respects the aspirations of the majority of the Ukrainian people. Along with major partners such as the EU and the US, we have sought to address the political and economic crisis in Ukraine. At the same time, we are working intensively to build international consensus that there must be consequences for Russia if it continues its flagrant disregard for international law.

[Lord Campbell-Savours (Lab)]

I apologise to the noble Baroness for intervening, but perhaps we can clarify something at the beginning of this debate. She keeps referring to breaches of international law, but in the Kosovo case, the president of the International Court of Justice, Hisashi Owada, said that international law contains,

“no prohibition on declarations of independence”.

The court also said that while the declaration may not have been illegal, the issue of recognition was a political one. Why is that case so different from the case that we are examining today?

[Baroness Warsi]

My Lords, I will have an opportunity to consider that specific question and will make sure that it is answered during this debate if we have that information.

On 6 March, an extraordinary meeting of the European Council in which the Prime Minister played a pivotal role agreed a three-phase approach to stand up to Russia’s illegal behaviour: first, immediate steps to respond to what Russia has done; secondly, urgent work on a set of measures to follow if Russia refuses to enter dialogue with the Ukrainian Government; and, thirdly, a set of further, far-reaching consequences should Russia take further steps to destabilise the situation in Ukraine.

I am sure that your Lordships would appreciate more detail on each of those steps, and I will take them in turn. First, as a response to what Russia has already done, immediate steps have already been taken. We have suspended preparations for the G8 summit in Sochi indefinitely. We have withdrawn royal and ministerial visits to the Sochi Paralympic Games. Work on a comprehensive new agreement on relations between Russia and the European Union has ceased, and the EU has suspended discussions on a more liberal visa regime in the Schengen area—a long-standing goal of Russian policy.

In the second phase, and in company with other allies, we have worked to persuade Russia to negotiate with the Government of Ukraine about their concerns rather than resorting to illegal measures. We have pushed for the creation of a contact group, first proposed by the Prime Minister back in January. The European Council agreed that such talks should start within a matter of days or further measures would be adopted—the so-called second phase. Yesterday, on 17 March, the Foreign Affairs Council agreed additional measures including asset freezes and travel bans against 21 individuals responsible for actions which undermine or threaten the territorial integrity, sovereignty and independence of Ukraine. These measures are in addition to those already agreed against Yanukovych and his circle.

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[Lord Soley (Lab)]

I fear I start from a rather more depressing position than many Members of this House. I agree with the concluding remarks of the noble Lord, Lord Howell. There is a lot in what he said and I think that there was mishandling by the European Union and NATO of a number of the east European states.

I start from the position of trying to understand the Russian position. I have spent some time not only reading the speeches and comments of President Putin, which are liberally sent to me by the embassy—for which, many thanks—but I have talked to the Russian ambassador, who is a very civilised and thoughtful man. If you look at what President Putin has been saying and doing, you recognise that there is a pattern to that behaviour which is trying to reassert control over areas of which he has lost control.

I can understand that in historical terms. Russia did lose out when the Soviet Union collapsed. More importantly, although Russia has a proud history in terms of what it has achieved scientifically, culturally and in other ways, it had a truly tragic history in the 20th century: two world wars, a revolution that failed disastrously and led to millions of people dying from famine or being uprooted and deported, and of course the gulags and all that followed from that. It is a tragic history and Russians feel it very strongly. They feel equally strongly that Ukraine not only should be under their influence but needs to be because of the “fascist threat”, as they play that card. President Putin plays it but many Russians believe it, and the reason they believe it is not hard to find: a lot of Ukrainians fought for the Nazis and were particularly brutal. The reverse is also true: many Ukrainians fought for the Communists and Stalin and were also very brutal. The whole of Ukraine was brutalised throughout the Second World War period.

We can understand all that, but the basic line on this is that you do not just throw over international agreements that you have signed—and Russia did sign, as the noble Lord pointed out, the 1994 declaration which removed the nuclear weapons from Ukraine in return for a guarantee of its borders from the five permanent members of the Security Council: Britain, France, China, Russia and the United States. That is what Russia has broken, because it feels passionately that Crimea should be part of Russia. Actually, that could have been achieved. It would not be an unreasonable thing to develop.

[Lord Campbell-Savours]

Could my noble friend tell me where in the Budapest memorandum it refers to a guarantee?

[Lord Soley]

I would have to look it up to find the exact place.

[Lord Campbell-Savours]

It is not there.

[Lord Soley]

It is a guarantee that force would not be used to change the borders of Ukraine. In return, Ukraine would give up the nuclear weapons on its territory.

In any event, even if my noble friend were right, which I do not think he is, and even if Putin were right to do what he has done, it would be disastrous, because—and I would put this very high on my list of concerns about President Putin—he plays the nationalist card. If you play the card which says, “The Russians in those territories call for my intervention to protect them”, where does that stop? The reason that people refer to Munich is not because they compare Putin to Hitler, or Russia to Nazi Germany—they do not; there is no similarity—but because there is a recognition, which plays very powerfully in the east European countries, that the Germans played the card of coming in to defend the German population and now Putin is using that argument for the Russian population, and that, once you play that card, it is very difficult to control it.

That is why I find this situation depressing. Even if President Putin says to people, “I do not want you to use the nationalist card in east Ukraine”, he has no guarantee that people will not. If they feel strongly that there is a real chance that Russia will regain the territories that it lost and that they will again come under the Russian state, which many of them would like, then you would lose control of it. We have to say, and everybody else in the world is saying, “Well, if you don’t do something about Crimea, and we didn’t do anything about Georgia and South Ossetia, then where does this stop?”. The problem is that, if you play the nationalist card, there are east European states which have real reason to be fearful, particularly the Baltic states—and they are members of NATO.

Please let us take a very hard look at this. I am not intending today to make any suggestions to the Government about the way forward. I agree that it must be a diplomatic way forward, but when people say, as they have been saying quite recently, “Nobody wants a war about this”, I simply remind them that in 1913 people were also going around saying, “Nobody wants a war”. The real danger of this situation is that someone will lose control of it. It is not controllable particularly when you play that nationalist card, so you get all sorts of unintended consequences. I understand the feelings of my noble friend Lord Campbell-Savours about this, but, frankly, you have to face up to the fact that, if you do not stop it somewhere, you cannot control it and it is right outside your control. We have been round this track before; it is a dangerous track.

The great thing about Russia is, as the noble Lord, Lord Howell, indicated, that many things are happening there that are very encouraging and exciting. You can see it moving back towards the more open and free society that we all want it to be. But I simply say that there have been three or four occasions in the past 100-odd years when Russia was doing that and, each time, it tripped over and failed. That is its tragedy, and none of us should underestimate the strength of feeling in Russia about being surrounded and invaded, and about its own inability to be the top power.

The other thing that stands out, particularly in Putin’s comments and speeches on this, is his anger and frustration that the United States is seen as the dominant power and that he is not seen as its equal, which is why he tries to rubbish some of the west European powers such as ourselves and others and why he tries to set himself up on an equal basis with the United States. As the noble Baroness, Lady Warsi, will know, I have been saying for the past two years that you will not get Assad to the table on Syria until President Putin makes him go there. Now that we have just seen the latest military advances of Assad’s armies in Syria, you know that that is right. Putin does not have an interest in settling the Syrian dispute other than under President Assad’s control. That is another one that we have probably lost. We have probably lost Crimea, although, as I have said, you can make a case for that. The tragedy is that it would have been perfectly possible, had Russian diplomacy been up to it, to say, “Look, we want a settlement along that border area that includes Crimea coming back to Russia”. That would have had to be with guarantees for the minorities there, because if I was a Tatar or one of the others in the Crimean peninsula, I would be deeply worried.

I have just a couple of concluding remarks. First, it would be naive in the extreme to think that this will stop here. My worry is that it will continue. We need to face up to that reality. Secondly, and very importantly, the European Union must get real about a foreign policy and a defence policy. One reason we misplayed our hand in east Europe is because we did not have clear policies. I take my hat off to my noble friend Lady Ashton who did a great job on Iran and a range of other things, but we do not have in Europe a foreign policy or a proper defence policy. We still have to rely on the United States. We are in a situation now where there is a leader in Russia determined to assert his authority over the areas formerly controlled by the Soviet Union as it then was. He wants to control those and we have a weak and divided Europe. Where have we heard that before?

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[Lord Campbell-Savours]

My Lords, with the leave of the House I will speak in the gap.

I place on record my strong dissent from the position taken by the European Union, the British Government and the Government of the United States in their treatment of this issue. We meddle at our peril in a part of eastern Europe that we little understand.

I will clarify the position on the Budapest memorandum, which has been oft-quoted in the press and during this debate. The Budapest memorandum was determined on the basis of a need to reduce nuclear weapons deployment in eastern Europe in the early 1990s. It was never seen as a settlement of boundaries in that part of eastern Europe. It does not guarantee frontiers and it is not a treaty, but it reaffirms an obligation to refrain from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity of Ukraine. Russia is perfectly entitled to challenge the territorial integrity of Ukraine as long as it does not use force and it has been so challenging since 1994. Anyone who follows the debate that has been going on over the years in eastern Europe will know that there has been a constant discussion over that matter, which is unsettled business as far as the Russians are concerned.

Furthermore, there is no evidence that force was used prior to this referendum. Yes, there has been lots of reporting of the alleged use of force, but I have not seen evidence of it. At the end of all this—no doubt there will be some kind of inquiry—I feel confident that we will find that force was not used. The use of force has not led to celebration and jubilation on the streets throughout Crimea, particularly on the back of a 96% vote on an 83% turnout. That does not suggest to me that those people have been intimidated into the way they have voted; they have simply voted for what they want, and they can now have it.

The truth is that Crimea is Russian and it is an accident of history, following the collapse of the former Soviet Union, that it has ended up in Ukraine. A historical mistake is now being corrected and in my opinion we are overreacting. We have repeatedly humiliated Russia over the past 20 years; it was particularly humiliated over the break-up of Yugoslavia. Indeed, the Russians now quote the precedent of Kosovo. They pray in aid the 2010 ruling by the International Court of Justice, when it states that international law contains,

“no prohibition on declarations of independence”.

We cannot ignore these precedents. Throughout the world, people are referring to the precedent of Kosovo. It is very interesting that, during this debate, there has been very little reference to what has happened in Kosovo. Indeed, when I intervened on the Minister at the beginning of the debate, she did not respond.

We need dialogue with the Russians, not sanctions. These sanctions will turn us into a laughing stock. It is out of dialogue that we can avoid these problems in future. The course that we are on is going nowhere and we will be humiliated when we back down.

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[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, I thank, in particular, the Opposition Front Bench for that very constructive and helpful speech. This is a take note debate, and I cannot, and would not wish to, announce the definitive policy of Her Majesty’s Government in response to the Ukraine crisis because it is still under way. As the noble Baroness, Lady Suttie, said, the important question is not where we are but where it ends. As the noble Lord, Lord Soley, wisely said, it would be naive to consider that it will stop here. There is some way to go and we have some influence over where it will end, and the Government are fully engaged in trying to bring to bear the influence that they have.

Yesterday, my right honourable friend and colleague the Foreign Secretary was at a meeting of the Foreign Affairs Council, where a number of decisions were taken. On Thursday and Friday, the Prime Minister will be at the European Council, at which a number of further decisions may be taken, and we will continue from there. We do not yet know how far President Putin will go. So far as we can see, this is very much a matter of what President Putin wants. I am not even sure that it is very valuable at present to talk to the Russian Foreign Minister—I am not sure that he always entirely knows what President Putin wants to do. Whether or not the Russians will continue to complete the annexation of Crimea within the next week is clearly one of the matters that we will have to take into consideration. We will do our best to help and will put pressure to bear so that that does not happen, but it may. Therefore, there is a great deal to play for and we will have to come back to further discussions in both Houses of Parliament and, of course, to continuing discussions with our allies and partners in the European Union and NATO and more widely within the UN. Her Majesty’s Government are extremely hard at work in co-operation with all our allies and friends.

A great deal has been said in this debate about interpretations of history—about Russian motivations, Putin’s motivation and the Russian view of their place in the world and their post-imperial angst. This country is not entirely without its post-imperial angst. The rest of the world does not always pay that much attention to us. We go into great paroxysms over why the Europeans are not nicer to us and why they do not give us what we want when we wish to have a bit of this, a bit of that and not too much of the other, but we sometimes have to accept that the rest of the world does not see the world as we wish to see it. That is also true of Russia today.

The noble Lord, Lord Howell, rightly said that what we have in Russia is a 19th-century approach to a 21st-century world—one in which it thinks that hard power is all that counts, with no truck with the soft power, on which the noble Lord, Lord Howell, is such an expert. There is an expectation of easy access to the open societies of the West without a reciprocal impact on Russian society and the Russian economy. I think it was the noble Baroness, Lady Morgan, who talked about whether Russia had a choice between integration and isolation. My understanding of one of the many themes of Russian history is that modernising efforts in Russia have always been an attempt to take the technical advances from the West without accepting the social and political implications. That was true of Peter the Great, it was true of the 19th century and I think that it is exactly true of where Putin is now. That is part of the problem. They think that they can pick and choose. Incidentally, there are those in this country who think they can pick and choose the quality of our relations with our major partners and are now discovering that they cannot. The Russians may also be discovering that they cannot, but certainly the mindset of Putin and those around him is that Russia can pick and choose and have the advantages of access to the open economy and open society of the West without allowing those influences to contaminate the autocracy of Russia.

Other countries also cherish nationalist memories and myths of their own, which we do not always wish to accommodate. After all, it was the myth that Kosovo was the birthplace of the Serbian nation that persuaded Milosevic and others to cling on to Kosovo in spite of the fact that there were no longer many Serbs living there. There are Muslims across the Middle East who believe that the reconstruction of Islamic caliphate is a vital part in reconstructing their myth of history. I dare say that the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours, does not share that view. Perhaps I may say to the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of St Albans that the Russian Orthodox Church in the high point of the Tsarist Empire collaborated in the idea that Moscow had become the third Rome and, as the third Rome, was entitled to reconquer the second Rome so that Constantinople logically should belong to Russia. That is not something which we accepted and, indeed, part of why we fought the Crimean War was to prevent the Russians from expanding to take over Constantinople.

All those things are a matter of how one views history and, as we all know, there are different ways in which to view it. Crimea is Russian today; it was Tatar yesterday; it has been a matter between many different nations. As I was writing this today from my limited knowledge of Ukraine, I was thinking that, within the lifetime of the majority of Members of this House, the people of Ukraine have been through the most incredible amount of suffering, changing of boundaries and one thing after another. My colleagues in the Foreign Office have always tried to get me to read a number of different books. I have read Timothy Snyder’s Bloodlands, which is entirely about how the lands between Germany and Russia suffered from the 1930s through to the 1940s. Famine in Ukraine was followed by the German invasion and then by the Soviet counterinvasion, which left the Ukrainians deeply divided, confused and mistrustful of each other and of all government.

We are working very hard on how to respond to Russian interventions. We have suspended indefinitely preparations for the G8 meeting in Sochi in June. It would be wrong for the G8 summit to go ahead in the current circumstances. We are considering what other measures to take. Of course, we recognise that we need to continue to talk to the Russian Government and, even more, to Russian society about a whole range of issues. But normal diplomatic relations cannot continue on the privileged basis which Russia felt that it would have.

The noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours, said that a historical mistake is now being corrected—we could spend a lot of time talking about what historical mistakes are—and suggested that there was no evidence of force. The evidence we have is that there are now 30,000 Russian soldiers in Crimea and that the Crimean parliament’s vote on unification with Russia took place with armed troops of Russian origin in the building.

[Lord Campbell-Savours]

Is the figure of 30,000 in excess of what was possible under the agreement that existed prior to this crisis?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

There is considerable evidence that a large number of Russian troops have arrived in Crimea in the past two to three weeks. My clear understanding is that it is not within the agreement. If I am wrong, I will write to the noble Lord. As a matter of interest, a number of troops, including troops from within the North Caucasus, were engaged in—one might put it gently—holding down Chechnya. We recognise that Russia’s rational interests lie in a prosperous and stable Ukraine, as a number of noble Lords have said. We also recognise that international politics is not entirely rational. The First World War would not have broken out if international politics had been entirely rational.

I say to the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, that of course the UK will do everything possible to maintain a constructive dialogue but it has to be a dialogue in which both sides listen and search for agreement on shared principles. We cannot accept that Russia has one set of principles but expects us to observe another. The noble Lord, Lord Chidgey, talked of stand-up arguments with Duma deputies. A lot of us have had that. I seem to remember having such an argument when I was leading a delegation that included the noble Lord, Lord Howell. I rather enjoyed the exchanges.

We have to tell the truth to our Russian partners and recognise that those within the elite demand the rest of the world to accept the special character of the Russian state, which we are not prepared to accept. Russian suggestions that we should move towards a federal and loose Ukraine while maintaining a centralised and authoritarian Russia are a good example of how proposals are being made that would be irrational to accept, but it is attempting to impose them.

It is deeply regretful that the current Russian regime appears to need weak and divided neighbours in order to feel secure. One worry is that a weak Crimea will join an occupied South Ossetia, Abkhazia and Transnistria and others as a means of weakening the states around Russia.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

There are all sorts of questions in the noble Lord's remarks and I could respond in a number of ways, but at this time of night I hesitate to do that.

The noble Lord, Lord Trefgarne, suggested that we might have a sort of sale and lease back with the Russians. The Ukrainian constitution makes it clear that any alteration of the territory of Ukraine must be resolved by an all-Ukrainian referendum. Article 134 of the constitution sets out that the autonomous Republic of Crimea is an integral constituent part of Ukraine and can only resolve issues related to the authority within the provisions set out by the Ukrainian constitution.

One could have negotiated this. The Government consider the referendum in Crimea to be illegal because it has been rushed through under the presence of a large number of Russian troops without updating the inaccuracy of the electoral register, with OSCE observers being refused entry. It is therefore not in any way acceptable to international standards.

The UN Security Council resolution was clear and strong on all of this. I say to the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, that of course there is a role for the UN Secretary-General and the UN. The Chinese abstention was a silent acknowledgement that some fundamental principles of international law and international sovereignty are at stake in this crisis.

A number of noble Lords suggested that we have to include Russia in all future discussions with Ukraine. Of course we do. We still make every effort we can to maintain a dialogue with Russia. We continue to urge Russia not to take any further action towards annexation of Ukraine. The UK remains supportive of the EU-Ukraine Association Agreement and it is now likely that the political and foreign policy aspects of the association agreement will be signed at the meeting of the European Council this week.

[Lord Campbell-Savours]

The Minister referred to the fact that OSCE monitors have been denied access. I understand that the Russians are claiming that something like 100 international monitors went in. Is that true or are they misleading us? If it is true, do we know where those monitors came from in the world community?

[Lord Hylton]

My Lords, before the Minister replies to that, will he say something about the OSCE in the sense that it may well provide an opportunity for achieving consensus for de-escalating the situation and for the giving up of extreme positions?