Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Lord Hammond of Runnymede and Christopher Chope

Tuesday 3rd March 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hammond]

We have heard a lot of noise from Moscow, but we have not yet seen any serious action. The omens are not promising. I heard just this morning that some countries’ intended high-level delegations to the funeral have not been able to obtain Russian visas. That probably tells us all we need to know.

[Mr Christopher Chope (Christchurch) (Con)]

The intransigence of the Russians is exemplified by the fact that they still hold in custody two Members of the Ukrainian Parliament, both of whom are members of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe. When will my right hon. Friend get tough and insist on expelling Russia from the Parliamentary Assembly and the Council of Europe itself?

[Mr Hammond]

We do not have plans to take that step at this stage, but I assure my hon. Friend that we raise the matter regularly—indeed, the Minister for Europe raised it with the Russian ambassador only last week. I am going to Kiev later this week, and we will continue to work with the Ukrainians to try to secure the release of those two Ukrainians, as well as the Estonian border guard who was captured by the Russians six months ago.

Ukraine

Debate between Lord Hammond of Runnymede and Christopher Chope

Tuesday 10th February 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hammond]

No, a good outcome would not look like that. It would look like an agreement to a ceasefire and a withdrawal from the current lines of contact, along the lines already suggested, and not just an agreement to its happening tomorrow, but evidence by the end of the week that Russian forces were pulling back; it would look like an agreement on the effective policing of the Russian-Ukrainian border so that once Russian equipment had moved back across the border into Russia, there was an effective, transparent regime for monitoring further equipment crossing the border; and it would look like an explicit withdrawal of Russian support for and endorsement of the separatist forces.

[Mr Christopher Chope (Christchurch) (Con)]

If it does not look like that, what will happen? It is clear already that Russia denies it even has troops in eastern Ukraine, and the Speaker of the Duma denied at the recent meeting of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe that Russia was even a party to the Minsk agreement and protocol, saying it was a mere bystander. What will happen? Russia could be playing for time, and in the meantime the frozen conflict is increasing. What will my right hon. Friend do to ensure that something happens? For starters, how about expelling Russia from the Council of Europe for being in breach of its statutes?

[Mr Hammond]

We do not know the Russian game plan—one difficulty is the absence of a debate about this in Russia; it is one man making all the decisions. We do not know whether Mr Putin has agreed to this process over the last few days because he has seen the light, understood the pressure on him and genuinely wants to find a solution, or because there is an EU Council meeting on Thursday. Traditionally, his tactic has been to ramp up the rhetoric of peace ahead of Council meetings, and then to drop it like a stone afterwards. In response to my hon. Friend’s specific question, however, the single most effective measure we could take to signal our continued displeasure at the failure of this initiative would be to extend the tier 3 sanctions to the end of 2015. That would send a clear message to the Russians.