Ukraine

Lord Judd Excerpts

Thursday 3rd April 2014 Grand Committee

[Lord Judd (Lab)]

My Lords, this is an important debate. We are grateful to the noble Baroness who initiated it and indeed for the very wise things that she said in her own observations.

I suggest that we see this terrible crisis as symptomatic and that we take a moment or two to look at history. The story of the struggle for identity in Russia has gone on for centuries. Is it to be a Western-orientated power when the prevailing language is French in St Petersburg, or are we to search for the soul of Russia, never quite identified, somewhere behind?

In that context, the role of the “strong man” has become crucial. In Russia there is a KGB elite exercising ruthless power, and consequently there is a lot of corruption. What is happening now is not new in human history: it is in part a great diversion to keep the Russian public distracted from the injustices and imperfections of their own society. We have seen this in the erosion of human rights, in the curbing of the freedom of the media and in the oppression of civil society.

What Putin did in Crimea is obviously wrong; it was a blatant breach of the international rule of law. It is difficult, though, and we must all confess this, to think of any referendum organised in any other circumstances in Crimea that would have resulted in a different conclusion. We have to accept that, and that takes us into deep waters. When we preach about the virtues of self-determination and the rule of law, we need a little humility because the world looks at us and says, “Hey, hang on a moment. What about Iraq? There was no specific UN Security Council resolution”, “What about Guantánamo Bay, which is still operating?”, and, “What about rendition, whose issues are still unresolved?”. Yet we go around preaching as though we were the centre of virtue in the world.

We need to get back to a sense of the international struggle together to reassert the importance and indispensability of human rights and the international rule of law. No matter how terrible this crisis, it may give us a good opportunity to start rebuilding together. But we will not do that by preaching; we will do it by dialogue, conversation and engagement. However, we must stand firm. It is clear that we cannot just have a breach of international law as has happened on the Crimean issue. If we then move on to talk about sanctions, though, for God’s sake do not let us posture in a hollow way that is not credible. We have to see the sanctions through, even if that means facing up to the issue of the southern pipeline.

The paradoxes are also strong, and they need to be frankly put to the Russians. I was deeply involved in the whole story of the north Caucasus. There, the Russian line was that self-determination was not acceptable and they ruthlessly repressed it. Now we suddenly hear from them that self-determination is central to any way forward. Again, we must examine our own record. We did not speak out strongly enough on the north Caucuses, so where is our credibility here? We also have to look at our failure on issues of human rights and civil society in Russia to be anything but rather muted in our comments.

We must stand firm, but in a context of somehow rebuilding some kind of dialogue. To those who say that it is simply a matter of telling the Russians what they must do, I say that as we are not going to invade Russia or to go to war with Russia, how the hell are we going to get this right in the long run if we do not get into some sort of mutuality? That means that if the Russians suggest that it is appropriate to think of federation, we do not automatically dismiss it because the Russians said it but, in the context of the ethnic challenges, look at whether we have to examine the proposition.