Ukraine
Lord Skidelsky Excerpts(4 days, 15 hours ago)
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Lord Skidelsky (CB)
My Lords, I do not know whether it is a punishment or a privilege to be put last in the list of Back-Bench speakers, as I invariably am when it comes to a debate on Ukraine. The noble Lord, Lord Coaker, was powerful and eloquent in opening, and it is clear that my noble friend Lord Barrow is going to be a great addition to our collective wisdom.
Two factors have upended the policy of successive British Governments: the arrival of Donald Trump in the White House, and the unexpected economic and military resilience of Russia. Until the end of last year, the agreed policy, as stated by then incoming Foreign Secretary, David Lammy, was that
“the British Government must leave the Kremlin with no doubt that it will support Kyiv for as long as it takes to achieve victory. Once Ukraine has prevailed, the United Kingdom should play a leading role in securing Ukraine’s place in NATO”.
I have heard this formula endlessly in the last three or four years. Can the noble Baroness tell us whether this is still the policy of the British Government? If not, why not? That policy, to my way of thinking, was always dishonest and in fact, morally repugnant, since we were never going to give Ukraine all it takes for victory, for the very good reason that any such policy carried an unacceptable risk of escalation. I am really worried by the insouciance of those noble Lords speaking today who talk about unleashing long-range missile attacks on the most heavily armed nuclear power in the world.
Now, after nearly four years of false pledges cashed in the lives of hundreds of thousands, we have reluctantly accepted that there is not going to be a Ukrainian victory anytime soon, and in fact, there is a very real prospect of Ukrainian defeat, as the noble Lord, Lord Tugendhat, pointed out. The real question now is, how can the coalition of the willing prevent this outcome? First came the suggestion that we would send in NATO peacekeepers to police a ceasefire, but our Government must have known that this would never be accepted. It would not be accepted by Russia and would not be accepted by the United States, which was supposed to provide a backstop. Can the noble Baroness tell us whether this obvious spoiling tactic is still on the table?
The latest plan is the so-called European Peace Facility, whose aim is to strengthen Ukraine’s war facility, a classic case of Orwellian “doublespeak”. The idea is that Europe should ramp up arms deliveries to Ukraine and put more pressure on Russia with new sanctions on oil exports, with loans coming from confiscated Russian assets. But no one thinking straight can believe that such measures, even if agreed and applied, will affect the course of the war in time to avert further territorial losses by Ukraine. In fact, a negotiated peace is the only way now of averting a Russian victory. That is my core position.
I want to be constructive, so I will suggest three ways in which our Government could help achieve a negotiated settlement. First, they should propose a demilitarised zone under a UN peacekeeping force to police a ceasefire. I am not nearly as pessimistic about the prospects of a ceasefire as some noble Lords have been—I remind the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Stirrup, that the armed pause of the Cold War lasted 50 years. China must also be brought into such an endeavour. It can exert much more leverage over Russia than we can. Trump seems to realise this, but all we seem able to do is talk about Chinese spies and underground tunnels. China is the missing piece in this whole process.
Secondly, we should start talking to Russian officials. Do not leave all the talking to the United States. To get a conversation going, we have to ignore the ICC arrest warrants, which in any case could be enforced only by a complete Russian defeat. Thirdly, we should urge UN-organised referenda in the four contested oblasts to allow the people who live there to decide democratically on their own future. Holding such referenda would offer both sides a credible and democratic pathway to end the conflict. Through initiatives of this kind, our Government could still turn a war mission into a peace mission. I beg Ministers to discover the courage to negotiate, for reasons of both realism and humanity.
The Minister of State, Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (Baroness Chapman of Darlington) (Lab)
My Lords, I thank both Opposition Front Benches for their continued support for our approach to Ukraine. It is, perhaps uniquely, something that brings us all together—perhaps, as noble Lords suggested earlier, that is one of the reasons it does not excite the media and the public in a way that some of those issues on which we do not agree so readily sometimes do. I will resist the temptation to respond to the jibe from the noble Lord, Lord Callanan, about 100-year partnerships—we can get into that on Tuesday, and I look forward to it.
I will attempt to answer all the questions that have been put to me this afternoon. If I miss anything, it is an omission, and I will write to noble Lords—particularly my very good noble friend Lord Stansgate, who by my count asked me 28 questions in his contribution.
I pay tribute to the noble Lord, Lord Barrow, and his quite remarkable maiden speech. I was looking forward to it, as were many others in this House. We very much welcome him and look forward to what will be, I am sure, many more well-informed, thoughtful and immaculately crafted contributions in the years to come. I do not mind a bland speech from time to time, as long as it is well-informed and a point is being made, rather than a speech that is incredibly entertaining but does not actually say anything. I am sure that we will all enjoy listening to him and his future contributions.
As the Foreign Secretary said a few weeks after her visit to Kyiv:
“As Ukraine stands firm against Russia, the UK stands firm with Ukraine. Ukraine’s security is Europe’s security, and the security and stability of the whole of Europe is vital for our security here in the UK”.—[Official Report, Commons, 15/10/25; col. 390.]
To all those this afternoon who have been urging us to go further and faster, suggesting new measures and telling us to stay the course, we thank you. We encourage every noble Lord to stay resolute and to keep making this encouragement loudly and publicly. The points made by the noble Lord, Lord Kerr, the noble Baroness, Lady Suttie, and others on the need to secure public support are well made and are accepted by the Government.
Ukrainians have defended their country with courage for over three and a half years. They have made clear their desire for the war to end and for a just and lasting peace. While President Zelensky has affirmed his readiness for a ceasefire and meaningful talks, Putin’s response has been to launch some of the largest attacks seen in Europe since the height of the Second World War. Our focus remains on ensuring Ukraine gets the support it needs to stay in the fight and protect its cities and infrastructure from Russia’s increasingly brutal attacks. We are ramping up the pressure on Putin to force him to conclude that his military objectives are unachievable and that he should engage in talks that result in a sovereign, secure and independent Ukraine.
Shortly before the Russian delegation walked out of the UN Security Council chamber last month, our Foreign Secretary told Foreign Minister Lavrov directly that this is our aim. Despite throwing everything it can at Ukraine, Russia has achieved none of its objectives, while the costs of the war are piling up. Russia has gained less than 1% of Ukraine’s territory since November 2022 and sustained over a million casualties in the process, and its economy is stagnating and economic pressure is biting. The UK will continue to work with partners and allies to go further.
The noble Lord, Lord McConnell, and the noble Baroness, Lady Pidding, asked about the deported children. I sincerely thank them for making sure that that was part of the debate this afternoon. Children should never be pawns of war. Russia’s forcible deportation, adoption and militarisation of Ukrainian children is a despicable and systematic attempt to erase Ukrainian identity and with it Ukraine’s future. The UK raises this issue continually with our partners and allies. We are playing our full part in international efforts to reunite these children with their families, where they belong.
Last Friday, the Prime Minister welcomed President Zelensky to London, and he co-chaired a virtual meeting of the coalition of the willing with more than 20 leaders. The Prime Minister urged them to act, to take Russian oil and gas off the global market, to make progress on using immobilised Russian sovereign assets to unlock billions in funding for Ukraine, and to provide more long-range capabilities to ensure Ukraine can defend itself. The Prime Minister underlined the group’s support for President Trump’s position that the fighting must stop immediately and that the current line of contact should be the starting point for negotiations. Leaders reiterated their determination to put robust arrangements in place for Ukraine’s future security so it can deter and defend itself against any future attack. In response to the noble Baroness, Lady Goldie, and others, that includes the deployment of a multinational force to help secure Ukraine’s skies and seas and regenerate Ukraine’s armed forces once hostilities have ceased.
Leaders expressed their intent to address Ukraine’s pressing financial needs for 2026 and 2027, which includes, as many noble Lords have argued, working up options to use the full value of immobilised Russian sovereign assets so that Ukraine has the resources it needs to defend its territory and rebuild its armed forces.
The Prime Minister announced that we are accelerating our UK programme to provide Ukraine with more than 5,000 lightweight multirole missiles, aiming to deliver an additional 140 missiles ahead of schedule, which will help bolster Ukraine’s defences through the depths of winter in the wake of Russian attacks on energy infrastructure.
The noble Baroness, Lady Suttie, asked about NATO and the noble Lord, Lord Barrow, asked about defence investment. We have made a historic commitment to spend 5% of GDP on national security. This is a generational increase, underlining the UK’s commitment to national security and our leadership in NATO.
In response to the question from the noble Baroness, Lady Goldie, about non-military support, we work to support Ukraine to implement vital democratic, economic and security reforms. Allies will continue to support progress towards interoperability with NATO.
For months now, President Zelensky has said that he is ready for a ceasefire and to engage in meaningful talks with President Putin. Yet Putin continues to stall and play for time, rejecting the opportunity for talks to end the war while escalating his attacks against Ukraine. So, we continue to work closely with our international partners to keep Ukraine in the fight, enable it to defend itself against Russia’s attacks and ratchet up the pressure on Putin to end his illegal war.
Our most powerful tool to bring Putin to the negotiating table is mounting economic pressure applied through sanctions. Since July 2024, the Government have introduced almost 900 new sanctions designations against individuals, entities and ships. In our most recent package, announced earlier this month, we sanctioned 90 targets across Russia’s energy, financial and military sectors. That includes Russia’s two biggest oil producers—two of the largest in the world—Rosneft and Lukoil. We also announced our intention to ban the import of oil products refined in third countries from Russian-origin crude oil, further restricting the flow of funds to the Kremlin.
We have led international efforts to disrupt Russia’s shadow fleet, sanctioning over 520 shadow fleet vessels to date. This hits Russia’s ability to transport oil to third countries. The noble Lord, Lord Ricketts, referred to India. We welcome decisions taken by certain Indian refineries to suspend future purchases of Russian crude. We welcome the sanctions packages announced by the US and EU last week, with the US matching our sanctions on Rosneft and Lukoil and the EU sanctioning Rosneft.
Lord Skidelsky (CB)
I thank the Minister for giving way. She has just produced some very impressive statistics on economic sanctions. What effect have they had?
Baroness Chapman of Darlington (Lab)
They are having a very real effect on the economy of Russia. I would perhaps describe it by saying that this is a battle, yes, on the front line, but it is also becoming a battle of military-industrial complex. Our ability to supply is at stake, and we are in competition with Russia. The more we can do to damage the Russian economy, the stronger we become. But we cannot do that alone. We need to do it alongside our partners and allies, and that is the work that our Prime Minister is engaged in.
Indeed, sanctions have denied Russia access to at least $450 billion, equivalent to an estimated two years of funding for this horrendous war. Noble Lords of course know that we do not speculate on future designations to maximise their impact, but they should be in no doubt that this Government will continue to ratchet up measures as we pile pressure on the Kremlin to change course.
In recent months, Russia has intensified attacks against Ukrainian civilians and civilian infrastructure. Russia has fired thousands of drones at Kyiv and other Ukrainian cities, resulting in ever more civilian casualties. These strikes are having a devastating impact on communities enduring extreme hardship, compounding displacement, trauma and loss. Drones are being used to target humanitarian responders as well. A clearly marked UN convoy delivering humanitarian assistance to front-line communities was hit earlier this month. I am sure noble Lords will join me in paying tribute to the selfless humanitarian aid workers who continue to operate in high-risk environments, not just in Ukraine but in Gaza, Sudan, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and elsewhere to reach those most in need, often under fire.
Several noble Lords asked specifically about women. The needs of women and girls have been embedded in our support for Ukraine, including funding for humanitarian aid, civil society and inclusion, sexual and reproductive health services and assistance to tackle gender-based violence. I thank the noble Lord, Lord Mott, for talking about children. UK funding delivered via partners is providing mental health and psychosocial support to Ukrainian rehabilitation professionals, the burns unit in Kyiv, Ukrainian Red Cross staff and volunteers, and adults and children in front-line oblasts. The British Army is supporting the morale and resilience of Ukrainian troops through the delivery of combat mental resilience practitioner training, and we will train 180 Ukrainian soldiers this year.
As winter begins to bite, Russia is stepping up its attacks on Ukrainian energy infrastructure once again. Russia’s aim is to plunge Ukrainians into cold and darkness, and it carried out its largest-ever attack on Ukraine’s gas infrastructure earlier this month. This threatens to deepen the humanitarian crisis for millions of people now facing a bitter winter without heat, electricity or access to basic services. That is why the Foreign Secretary announced £142 million in aid during her visit to Kyiv last month to support Ukraine through the winter and into next year. That includes £42 million for vital repairs to the electricity transmission network and critical protection for gas and power infrastructure as temperatures plunge, as well as £100 million in vital support for humanitarian assistance to get emergency relief to communities on the front line, a clear commitment that we stand with our Ukrainian friends in the face of Russia’s intensified attacks.
My noble friend Lord Coaker made an inspiring speech at the beginning of this debate and set out details of our military support as we continue to work with our Ukrainian partners to ensure that they have what they need to stay in the fight. In addition, the UK has been the leading bilateral donor since the start of the full-scale invasion, with a commitment of up to £1.2 billion to fund humanitarian assistance, energy resilience, stabilisation and reform, recovery and reconstruction. UK funding continues to provide urgent assistance to front-line communities to protect the most vulnerable. We are supporting efforts to bolster the rule of law, pursue justice and fight corruption. We are bolstering the growth and resilience of Ukraine’s economy, and we are helping Ukrainians to revitalise community services as they build more efficient and inclusive systems of social protection.
I conclude this debate by echoing the words of the Deputy Prime Minister at the United Nations General Assembly in New York just a few weeks ago:
“We must all strive for a just and lasting peace in Ukraine, which maintains the integrity of our UN Charter and sees Ukraine emerge from Russia’s brutal war as a sovereign, secure and independent nation”.
As we speak, he said:
“President Putin rains down ever more drones and missiles on the Ukrainian people”,
yet President Zelensky continues to affirm his commitment to peace at every turn, and the Ukrainian people continue to demonstrate their resilience and determination to resist Russia’s aggression. As the Deputy Prime Minister said, our message to our Ukrainian friends is clear:
“We will stand with you today, tomorrow, and one hundred years from now”,
as we sustain the UK’s unwavering support for our shared future for decades to come.
Defence Industrial Strategy
Lord Skidelsky Excerpts(1 month, 3 weeks ago)
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Lord Coaker (Lab)
I thank the noble Baroness for her comment about the Type 26 success that our country had and the frigates that will be built on the Clyde. It is a massive success for our industry. I also thank her for her continued efforts with respect to small businesses, not only in Northern Ireland but across the whole of the UK.
I hope the noble Baroness will notice that in the defence industrial strategy we tried hard to make sure that all the regions and the nations of the UK were properly represented. In one diagram on page 33, the noble Baroness will see the number of jobs in Northern Ireland: a total of 3,300 MOD-supported direct industry, civilian and military jobs. The noble Baroness is quite right to point out that we need to make sure that it is not only Thales in Northern Ireland which is of benefit, important as that is, but the small and medium-sized businesses. I do not want to incur the wrath of my noble friend Lord Beamish, but we have set up a specific body to drive small business growth and made a commitment to ensure that billions of pounds-worth of investment in the industry is directed towards small and medium-sized businesses.
Lord Skidelsky (CB)
My Lords, I would like to offer a dissenting opinion, but some noble Lords will be used to that. I strongly support industrial policy, but the coupling of defence and industrial strategy needs some thought. It suggests that industrial policy is driven by military needs, whereas in fact the case for industrial policy needs to be made apart from that. To a student of economic history, it is reminiscent of military Keynesianism, which was born in the Second World War, continued in the Cold War and dropped only with the end of the Cold War. There seems to be a pattern here.
Is the Minister entirely comfortable with basing the case for industrial policy on the need to rearm, as developed in the strategic defence review? I support industrial policy, but I would not want to hinge my whole argument on the need to rearm. That itself is something that needs to be discussed quite independently of the case for industrial policy.
Lord Coaker (Lab)
I know that the noble Lord has an opinion that not many people agree with, including me, but I appreciate that he puts it forward time and again in a respectful, calm and intellectual way. He is to be congratulated on that.
My argument to him would be this. There is a need to rearm and a defence industrial policy has to be geared towards the rearmament that needs to take place. I will give him one example, with which I know he will disagree. My premise is that it is a good thing that we are supporting Ukraine. Despite what we have been doing, with the defence industry as it was, we—not only us but other European countries—were not able to deliver the equipment necessary for Ukraine to do all that it wanted to do as easily as it could. That is a difficult, if not dangerous, position for us and our allies to be in.
I made this point at DSEI yesterday. I said that, as a Minister of State for the UK MoD, I do not want to be in a position where I believe in supporting Ukraine but read in the paper—as I did, going back probably a year—that Ukraine had had to withdraw because it did not have the necessary military equipment to continue the fight. That is not a situation we should be in. Part of dealing with that is to develop our defence industry and improve its capability and capacity, so we are not in a position where we cannot support those we would wish to support.
Ukraine: Negotiations
Lord Skidelsky Excerpts(1 month, 3 weeks ago)
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Lord Skidelsky
To ask His Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the current state of negotiations for ending the war in Ukraine.
The Minister of State, Ministry of Defence (Lord Coaker) (Lab)
My Lords, before I answer the Question, let me quickly pay tribute to my noble friend Lord Collins for all the work he did with the Foreign Office and wish him well in the future.
We remain focused on putting Ukraine in the strongest possible position. We welcome President Trump’s efforts to end the war and are working closely with the US, Ukraine and our other partners to achieve a just and lasting peace. We continue to work with partners to ensure that Ukraine is able to defend itself against Russia’s aggression. The UK has committed £4.5 billion in military support this year alone, and we continue to ramp up economic pressure on Russia to get it to stop the killing and engage in meaningful talks.
Lord Skidelsky (CB)
My Lords, I thank the Minister for his reply, but may I press him more fully to explain what contribution he thinks our country can and should make to the peace process? The Government have insisted on the need for British and European forces to be stationed in Ukraine to guarantee the integrity of any ceasefire and, indeed, of the peace settlement. The Russian Government have said that they would not accept the presence in Ukraine of boots on the ground from that source. Given this, does not the Government’s insistence on the need for such a force imply that they expect the war to continue indefinitely? If not, how and when, and with what result, do the Government expect the slaughter to end?
Lord Coaker (Lab)
I thank the noble Lord for the question. The first point that needs to be made is that it is up to Russia as well to engage in meaningful talks, and it is up to Russia as well to be sincere in the efforts that it is making to bring about the ceasefire and, in the end, to come to some agreement. The contribution that we have made is by insisting that Ukraine has a voice in whatever solution we can come to an agreement about; to keep the US involved, which is crucial to the integrity of any agreement or settlement that is reached; and to move towards what we are calling a reassurance force, as the noble Lord will know, to ensure that the security guarantee that Ukraine has after any settlement is real and meaningful. That is what we are trying to do to ensure that we end the war as quickly as possible. We are supporting President Trump in his efforts to do that, but I say again that it also requires Russia to enter the talks meaningfully.
Strategic Defence Review 2025
Lord Skidelsky Excerpts(3 months, 2 weeks ago)
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Lord Skidelsky (CB)
My Lords, I have a long-standing respect for the noble Lord, Lord Robertson. In the early 2000s, we were both engaged in trying to build better relations with Putin’s Russia—he as chair of the NATO-Russia Council and myself as founder of the UK-Russia round table, whose efforts were then openly encouraged by the Prime Minister, Tony Blair. Since then, our paths have diverged. I have huge reservations about the report that the noble Lord, Lord Robertson, so ably presented earlier—mainly because I believe that it greatly exaggerates the threats that we actually face.
I am perhaps the only person in the House who takes this view, but I am happy that complete unanimity is not a requirement of membership of our august assembly. On one thing we can all agree—that we should spend more on our own defence, if only because the United States is no longer a reliable guarantee of our security. However, this salutary prudential note is overwhelmed by the report’s concentration on the need to guard against a supposedly imminent and potentially lethal Russian danger. The SDR states:
“Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 … irrefutably demonstrated … the threat, with state-on-state war returning to Europe”.
It goes on to say that the UK and its allies are “under daily attack” from Russia—note that word “daily”—
“with aggressive acts—from espionage to cyber-attack and information manipulation”.
We are told that Russia has demonstrated
“its willingness to use military force, inflict harm on civilians, and threaten the use of nuclear weapons to achieve its goals”.
The conclusion from all that type of argument is that Britain must rearm to deter and, if necessary, “fight and win” a war against Russia. As Mark Rutte, NATO’s Secretary-General, put it, the British had better rearm or “learn to speak Russian”. This view of the matter is wildly overwrought.
The report then argues that, since Russia has intentionally blurred
“the lines between nuclear, conventional”
and sub-state warfare, an integrated British response should combine both conventional and hybrid forms of war preparation. So great stress is placed on the need for a resilient home defence to guard against
“espionage, political interference, sabotage, assassination and poisoning, electoral interference, disinformation, propaganda, and Intellectual Property theft”—
and all these weapons are daily used by our adversaries.
To my mind, the tone is dangerously over the top. Let me point to two specific defects. First, the SDR wants to prepare the UK for “high-intensity, protracted war”, but it says nothing about its possible duration. The Cold War ended with détente, but there is no peaceful endgame in these pages, only a continuous state of armed alertness. As the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Bristol asked: where is the peace strategy? Secondly, to keep the UK in a constant state of war alertness requires, as Prime Minister Keir Starmer has frankly admitted, a radical “shift in mindset”, a transformation of culture and the eradication of unacceptable behaviour—in short, acceptance of defence and security as the “organising principle of government”. Have the authors of the SDR stopped to consider the Orwellian implications of gearing up the nation for permanent war preparation?
The SDR rightly draws attention to the increased, and often subterranean, threats of harm opened up by rapidly accelerating technological innovation. But I draw the opposite conclusion: the multiplication of technological threats provides a compelling argument, not for a nuclear or an AI arms race, but for global co-operation to limit the malign use of technology. It is the joint responsibility of leaders of all the great powers to act as adults and not as children playing around with their lethal toys. It is the duty of those with the greatest power—for good or ill—to behave in such a way as to maximise the chance of a peaceful future for us all.
Ukraine: UK Policy
Lord Skidelsky Excerpts(7 months, 2 weeks ago)
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Lord Skidelsky
To ask His Majesty’s Government what is their policy with regard to the Ukraine war following the new policy of the government of the United States of America.
Lord in Waiting/Government Whip (Lord Moraes) (Lab)
My Lords, before we start the QSD, I remind all noble Lords participating of the now four-minute time limit for contributions, other than for the noble Lord, Lord Skidelsky, and the Minister. I ask all colleagues to stick to this time and begin winding their remarks before approaching the four-minute mark to protect time for other contributions and the Minister’s response. If we do run to time, speakers in the gap can have up to two minutes.
Lord Skidelsky (CB)
My Lords, last Thursday, the noble Lord, Lord Howell, asked the House to take note of the UK’s international position. My purpose today is narrower but more urgent; to ask the Government what their Ukraine policy now is. It is urgent because the Trump Administration have torn up the familiar script. I wish the Government had offered a full-length debate to consider the consequences of this.
I remind your Lordships of the script. The King’s Speech of 17 July promised full support to Ukraine and a clear path to NATO membership. That was of course before the American election. It echoed what David Lammy, Labour’s prospective Foreign Secretary, had written in May, which was that
“the British government must leave the Kremlin with no doubt that it will support Kyiv for as long as it takes to achieve victory”.
This, in turn, echoed the previous Government’s Grant Shapps: “We need consistently and reliably to do whatever Ukraine needs to win the war”. I have heard this repeated word for word all round your Lordships’ House in every Ukraine policy debate over the last four years.
Concerning Ukraine’s clear path to NATO membership, Peter Hegseth, US Defense Secretary, has just said that “NATO membership is not a realistic outcome of a negotiated peace”. So that is one plank of the King’s Speech gone.
What about full support for Ukraine’s war aims? Our leaders may have thought it necessary to pledge this to keep up Ukrainian morale, but there is not— and never was going to be—a Ukrainian victory, for the simple reason that the United States and NATO were never going to risk a war with Russia to achieve it. President Zelensky has now recognised this and accepted a ceasefire, and with it the reality of a compromised peace. In upending these pledges, the Trump Administration have upended our own reckless, dangerous and insincere quasi-commitments.
Words have real effects. Words such as “unprovoked”, “full-scale”, “barbaric” and “criminal” to describe Russian actions, which have tripped effortlessly off ministerial tongues, closed the door to diplomacy. You do not talk to people you label criminals and pariahs. It is an important step forward that no member of the Trump Administration has used this language since the President has been in office.
As far as I know, there has been—and the Minister might confirm this—no direct contact with the Russian Government since the war started. The Russian embassy in London has been treated as an unwelcome outpost of an enemy state. So much for the role of diplomacy in the last four years.
The UK needs to provide some thought leadership on how to end this tragic conflict. To his credit, our Prime Minister has made a start. At the London meeting of 2 March, Sir Keir Starmer proposed a four-point peace plan. The first point was to keep up military aid to Ukraine and economic pressure on Russia. I agree with this, but we should not be tempted to provide the kind of military help urged by some of our warmongers, which will only lead to a dangerous escalation.
We should also understand the limits of economic sanctions. Trump has threatened bad financial things if Russia rejects a ceasefire, but Russia is already the most sanctioned nation in the world. The purpose of sanctions, as often stated, was to degrade Russia’s ability to wage war. However, Russia has opened up alternative import routes for essential supplies and markets for its oil, energy and natural gas exports. The sanctions regime is, and will remain, much too full of holes to prevent Russia finishing its business with Ukraine. Nevertheless, the promise of its withdrawal does remain a powerful potential inducement to bring Russia to the negotiating table.
I agree with the second point that any lasting peace must guarantee Ukraine’s security, but Sir Keir said nothing about Russia’s security. He reflected the standard Whitehall view that NATO was never a real threat to Russia. This script, too, must be scrapped. Any durable peace must take into account the security concerns of both Ukraine and Russia.
I agree with the third point, that we must increase our military spending, but I mistrust the reason most often given, which is to meet the Russian threat. That is just a replay of Cold War rhetoric. European defence spending needs to go up, not because Russia threatens Europe but because Europe and Britain need to shoulder a larger share of NATO’s costs. We cannot go on expecting America to pay for our protection for ever.
Sir Keir Starmer’s fourth point is that the UK, with countries such as France, should place troops on the ground and aircraft in the air to enforce the ceasefire. This has always been a non-starter, despite the mindless repetition of the cliché “coalition of the willing”. The Trump Administration will not agree to provide the necessary backstop, and Russia, as could have been expected, has rejected the idea of NATO forces being stationed in Ukraine under a different name. Why make a proposal which is bound to be rejected unless the intention is to prolong hostilities? I concur therefore with Anatol Lieven when he says:
“Any peacekeeping force must come from genuinely neutral countries under the authority of the United Nations”.
Standing in the way of more realistic UK appraisals is the continuing misinterpretation of the motives of Putin and Trump. Time and again, I have heard noble Lords echo the Government’s line that, unless Putin is seen to fail in Ukraine, he will be “emboldened” to broaden his assault on Europe, starting with Georgia, Moldova, the Baltic states—and where will it end? I believe this profoundly misinterprets both his intentions and Russia’s capabilities.
Of course one can argue endlessly about what Putin’s intentions are, but I concur with many specialists who believe that, above all, he wants Russia to be surrounded by neutral states, not by NATO missiles. A slight knowledge of history will explain why this might be so. However, I agree with Professor Jeffrey Sachs that we should not provoke the bear by inflaming ethnic nationalism in Georgia, Estonia and Lithuania, as we did in Ukraine. A durable peace with a prickly nuclear power requires great prudence. As for Russia’s expansionary capacity, I will just cite Owen Matthews in the Spectator:
“the supposedly mighty Russian army has been fought to a standstill not by Nato … but by Ukraine’s once-tiny military”.
We must also scrap our Trump-phobic narrative. This views him as an amoral deal maker with no principles, cozying up to dictators. In fact, President Trump has consistently and persistently said “Stop the killing” —an eminently moral standpoint sometimes ignored by our own humanitarians. He has replaced a passive war policy with an active search for peace. If he does succeed in ending the war, he will richly deserve the Nobel Peace Prize.
The Government have been talking about a peace process based on sticks, but in diplomacy you need both sticks and carrots. Where are the carrots? What positive incentives are we offering Russia to make peace? I would like the Minister, in winding up, to endorse the blessed phrase “compromise peace”. Only if he does so can we be sure that the script has changed.
Ukraine (International Relations and Defence Committee Report)
Lord Skidelsky Excerpts(7 months, 4 weeks ago)
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Lord Skidelsky (CB)
My Lords, I will not speak directly to the proposals of the report to improve our military capabilities but will consider the framework in which they are set.
The report’s underlying assumption is that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has made Europe a much more dangerous place, against which we have to rearm ourselves if we are not to suffer the fate of Ukraine somewhere down the line. The report was published before Trump’s victory in the US election and therefore before the possible defection of the United States, which has been the subject of a great deal of comment this afternoon but I do not think touches the main point that the report wants to make. I reject the report’s line of argument. I am the first person to do so in this debate and have done so fairly consistently over the past two or three years. Therefore, I reject the conclusions which follow from it. I will try to explain why.
In 1989, an American political scientist called Francis Fukuyama published an iconic article in the journal The National Interest called “The End of History?”, and the subsequent two decades have sometimes been called “the Fukuyama moment”. Basically, he argued that the fall of the Soviet Union had brought about the end of history, because the causes of war between the great powers had been removed. There was a lot of initial confirmation of that, such as Gorbachev’s dream of joining the common European home. Out of that optimism came the idea of an exciting peace dividend. Of course, there would be mopping-up operations, especially in those parts of the world lagging in their appreciation of western values, but these would be nothing like the mass industrial warfare that we had experienced in the two world wars and which threatened throughout the Cold War.
The Fukuyama view of history was largely myopic. It presupposed that the world would rapidly become democratic and that science and technology would simply promote international economic co-operation. Neither of these expectations was realised. But out of the disappointed hopes of those two decades it was easy to construct a completely opposite future marked by the clash of civilisations, between the autocratic and the democratic powers, and fierce competition between the major nations of the world for control of artificial intelligence technology.
In a way, far from wanting to join Europe, Russia was depicted as wanting to attack it and even to conquer it if given the chance. In this perspective, the rhetoric of the Cold War was simply repurposed to the perceived dangers of the new situation. That has remained the conventional view; John Healey, the Defence Secretary, has said that Russia is very dangerous and the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Stirrup, has said in this debate that we face a dramatically increased security risk.
It is interesting that all the witnesses who gave oral evidence to the committee came from the defence sector. Therefore, it is not surprising that the report strongly advocated a new or beefed-up defence industrial society and economy. What is wrong with all that? There is confusion running through the report between the nature of modern warfare, of which Ukraine is an example, and the nature of Russia’s intentions to Europe, as revealed by its invasion of Ukraine. Dr Peter Roberts of Exeter University rightly warned the committee of our inability to understand intent, which is a major flaw in our thinking, and that is true of the report. Yes, the Ukrainian war reveals the threatening nature of modern warfare, but not the kind of threats we face from Russia in Europe.
The accepted view is that this invasion reveals the expansionist nature of the Putin regime. There are, however, many knowledgeable and respected analysts in Europe, the United States and the global South who deny that premise and argue with Jack Matlock, a former US ambassador to Russia, that Putin was provoked into invading Ukraine because NATO was trying to draw Ukraine into a hostile alliance and, had it not been so engaged, there would not have been an invasion.
Let me sum up. I am not against the rearmament of Europe. We live in a dangerous world, of course, but military spending is not an end in itself; it is a means to security. There is no special virtue in spending X rather than Y per cent of GDP on defence. The threats to security have to be perceived and analysed accurately—far more accurately than this report does to justify the volume and nature of the proposals that it is making.
Lord Balfe (Con)
My Lords, your Lordships can always tell when they are getting to the end of a debate, because the noble Lords, Lord Skidelsky and Lord Balfe, will be speaking. Like the noble Lord, Lord Skidelsky, I disagree with much of the report, but I thank the noble Lord, Lord De Mauley, and his colleagues for giving it to us, because this is exactly the time to discuss how we are going to handle the new situation.
Fifty-five years ago, Ted Heath, our then Prime Minister, outlined quite clearly why we should move away from the United States and start to look at the interests of Europe when we are defending Europe. In that, he was surprisingly supported by Enoch Powell. They both fell back on the doctrine that states do not do favours for other states. They have foreign policies to maximise their impact. That was always confirmed to me when I was in the European Parliament. For some years, I was on an outfit called the Transatlantic Policy Network and, through that, got to know the late Senator John McCain quite well. He was quite clear with me that there is no special relationship. He once said, probably very accurately, “There is only a special relationship in that we rely on you to keep the sergeants’ mess in control while we look after the officers”. He was right.
To an extent, I welcome President Trump and his disruption because it is long overdue. The invasion of Ukraine was clearly illegal, but it was not unprovoked. There were years of provocation preceding it, which ended by chasing Viktor Yanukovych out of office. From then on, there was little hope that Ukraine would settle down as a NATO ally in the West because Putin, who is in charge of his country and has to do his best for it, is of the view that the borders need redrawing. I have been in Crimea and all over the Donbass region. It is Russian. Let us face that: it is not Ukrainian; it is Russian and that is why there is little objection to a Russian presence there. Your Lordships are not meant to like these facts, but they are the truth.
What we now have to do, in my view, is adjust our policies in Europe so that we can break Russia away from China. We seem to be settling back and saying, “Oh yeah, Russia and China are going to get together”. China is far more of a threat to western values, because it does not rely on a western philosophy in the way that it looks at the world and, if it is allied to Russia, that means it is on the borders of Europe—it will have bases in the Arctic before long. My view is that we need to come to terms with Trump.
One challenge for the Ministry of Defence is that we need to make sure that our nuclear deterrent will actually work. I was assured by John McCain that the Americans held the key to certain aspects of launching the missiles that made them completely under American control. Could we launch an independent missile? France can, and that is why France will be the leader of the new European security dimension.
The people we need to look to are Merz in Germany—the new chancellor—and Giorgia Meloni, who has a very good vision of how Europe should turn out, and we must hope that Macron can be succeeded by someone who has European interests at heart and is not a nationalist. I see that as being our big challenge: we have to get back into Europe as a country and get as close to the Europeans as we possibly can. We will not be able to lead the European defence initiative, for the bad reason that we decided to leave the European Union. We will not get in there, because France will claim the initiative—and, frankly, if I were France, I would claim the initiative—but we do need to get more closely aligned.
My final point is that we have had some mention of the Scandinavian version of security. That is based on a form of national service and on defending the home space. We need to indulge in that. There is no market in Britain for body bags, and there is no market in Britain for foreign adventure beyond that necessary to defend our own country and our close allies in Europe.
Ukraine
Lord Skidelsky Excerpts(1 year ago)
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Lord Skidelsky (CB)
My Lords, I am usually put last on the speakers’ list in any debate on this topic, but I treat that as a badge of honour. I welcome the opportunity we have been given to take note. I have been taking note of the Government’s position on Ukraine for over two years now. It is unchanging: the promise, endlessly repeated, to support Ukraine “up to the hilt”—to do “whatever it takes”. The noble Lord, Lord Coaker, has simply repeated this with his usual eloquence.
What Ukraine thinks it takes is shown by President Zelensky’s latest victory plan: the Russian army must be driven out of Crimea and Donbass. However, who now believes that Ukraine can achieve this kind of victory at the present level of western support? Rather, there is growing agreement that without expanded western support, Ukraine, despite its courage and determination, faces defeat. This was always likely once Russia started to mobilise on a larger scale.
The demographics alone indicate this: you have a country of 36 million fighting one of 147 million. In the last four years, Ukraine’s population has shrunk by 20% while Russia’s has grown. A population the size of London has simply disappeared through war and migration; that is the reality on the ground. Of course, North Korean involvement has added a new front in this debate, but we must not delude ourselves that Russia needs North Korean troops to go on fighting. So the question arises: what more must we do to do what it takes?
There are two basic answers. The first is to tighten economic sanctions, for example by confiscating seized Russian assets. The idea that economic sanctions will cripple Putin’s war machine lingers on in the face of much evidence to the contrary. Since sanctions were imposed, Russia’s economy has boomed, Ukraine’s has slumped and the EU’s has stagnated. I hope that Treasury officials will expand on the lesson given by my noble friend Lord Desai as to why this has happened and persuade their sanctions-addicted colleagues at the Foreign Office to ease up on their enthusiasm for this approach.
I want to repeat the question from the noble Baroness, Lady Smith, which was also referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Balfe. Have the Government taken note of the two-day BRICS summit in Kazan, where Putin hosted a meeting of 36 countries including India and China? It was also attended by UN Secretary-General António Guterres. One wants to ask: in this evolving world order, who is the pariah?
The other notion going around is that we should give Ukraine permission to use long-range missiles and navigation systems, supplied by us and other NATO countries, to strike targets deep in Russia. Do the Government support this? It is crucial, because without that support their strategy collapses. Ukraine needs something else. Are the Government prepared to provide that long-range ability to strike deep into Russian territory?
The victory at any price school relies on two exceedingly dangerous fallacies. The first is that defeating Russia in Ukraine is the key to the security of Europe. For understandable reasons, Ukraine presents itself as Europe’s shield against Russia, and many noble Lords have endorsed this. The argument goes: “If you do not defeat the Russians in Ukraine, they will keep on coming at you. Who next—the Baltics, Georgia, Poland or Moldova? Where will a maniac like Putin stop?” I call this the Munich reflex. It affects the thinking of all British elites because Britain, by its surrender to Hitler at Munich, unleashed him on the rest of Europe. They feel guilty about it and say: “We must not repeat that mistake”. But this is contextually blind. As Owen Matthews pertinently pointed out,
“the supposedly mighty Russian army has been fought to a standstill not by Nato—which, as Zelensky joked … ‘hasn’t turned up yet’—but by Ukraine’s once-tiny military”.
The second conceptual flaw is the discounting of Russian retaliation. That is very dangerous. Putin has already said that Russia would be prepared to use nuclear weapons in response to any massive air and space attack over Russia’s border by a non-nuclear power. Is it the Government’s view that he is bluffing?
Is there a way to bring the fighting to an end? The most hopeful recent development in this deadly game of chicken has been a statement by President Zelensky reported in the Financial Times two days ago:
“Russia putting an end to aerial attacks on Ukrainian energy targets and cargo ships could pave the way for negotiations to end the war”.
At last, there is a breakthrough to realism. Will the Government seize this opportunity to start some serious diplomacy? I mourn those who have died. What now moves me above all else is the thought of the thousands more young men, women and children yet to die if this war is not quickly brought to an end. I beg the Government to play their part in bringing the killing and destruction to a close.
King’s Speech
Lord Skidelsky Excerpts(1 year, 3 months ago)
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Lord Skidelsky (CB)
My Lords, I welcome the new Front Bench. I know the noble Lord, Lord Coaker, as an eloquent speaker and a doughty defender of the good fight—if he is allowed to.
I believe the Starmer era will be defined by its handling of foreign affairs. As many noble Lords have pointed out, the world is very dangerous place. There are three powder kegs: in the Far East, in the Middle East and in Ukraine. Each is capable of igniting a world war. I concentrate on Ukraine because it is on the outcome of this conflict that our Government can hope to have their biggest influence.
The gracious Speech says—the noble Lord, Lord Moore, also quoted this—that:
“My Government will continue to give its full support to Ukraine and its people and it will endeavour to play a leading role in providing Ukraine with a clear path to NATO membership”.
The new Foreign Secretary spelt it out in even more detail, saying that
“the British government must leave the Kremlin with no doubt that it will support Kyiv for as long as it takes to achieve victory. Once Ukraine has prevailed, the United Kingdom should play a leading role in securing Ukraine’s place in NATO”.
The two propositions in David Lammy’s article are of course linked: victory as defined by Kyiv and NATO means the expulsion of the Russians from Crimea and the Donbass region. Without such a victory, there can be no clear path to NATO membership.
My first question to the Government is this: do they support President Zelensky’s request to use western-supplied missiles against targets deep in Russia? Most noble Lords who have spoken on this believe that the Government should give the necessary permission but, to my mind, giving Ukraine permission to use our missiles for offensive operations deep in Russia comes perilously close to turning a proxy war into an actual war by NATO against the most heavily armed nuclear power in the world. Can we be assured that the Government will weigh properly the risk of such a deadly escalation before giving Ukraine any such permission, and bring those risks to the attention of their NATO allies, some of which are disturbingly trigger happy?
Those such as the noble Lords, Lord Hague and Lord Dannatt, who advocate arming Ukraine to carry the war to Russia, seem unconcerned with the danger of escalation. They never properly face up to the question of what the net gain to Ukraine would be of extending the war in this way. Perhaps the Minister will repair this omission.
I am concerned by the statement of General Sir Roland Walker, Chief of the General Staff, that Britain has three years to prepare for war against the “axis of upheaval”: Russia, China, North Korea and Iran. It is surely not the job of serving officers of the Crown to define British foreign policy, so I urge the Government to tell the general not to be so free with his public words.
My final concern is with economic sanctions. The Bell, which is by far the most reliable source of information on Russia, has tirelessly pointed out that instead of weakening the Russian economy, sanctions against individual Russians have brought about the repatriation of Russian capital into Russia to boost Putin’s war chest. Why do the Government believe that such sanctions will help bring about a Ukrainian victory?
I start from a different position: I do not believe that either side can defeat the other, short of a dangerous escalation. That is why I favour a negotiated peace as soon as possible. This means two things: recognising that Ukraine has already won its most important victory for independence, and recognising that postponement of negotiations will make Ukraine’s position worse and not better. We may supply Ukraine with more and deadlier weapons, but Russia will continue to turn itself into a totally militarised economy, capable of even more deadly retaliation.
I finish up where I started: what is the Government’s road map to peace in Ukraine? I hope the Minister will tell me where I have gone wrong in my argument. If the Government cannot fault it, I beg them to rethink their policy, because we are talking about the life and death of thousands and perhaps millions.
Ukraine
Lord Skidelsky Excerpts(2 years, 1 month ago)
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Lord Skidelsky (CB)
My Lords, I thank the Government for giving this all too rare opportunity to discuss the most fateful foreign policy issue of our day. I see that I have been bracketed with one or two other notable troublemakers; I am very happy to be speaking after the noble Lord, Lord Balfe.
I feel more isolated in this House when I speak on foreign policy than on any other subject, despite my strong feeling that what I am saying urgently needs to be said. I was one of a handful of Peers who opposed NATO’s bombing of Serbia in 1999 and the invasion of Iraq in 2003. The three main parties supported both policies. I managed to avoid speaking about Afghanistan in this House, though not writing an article in the Guardian headed “Seven pointless years in Afghanistan”, in which I argued that a negotiated settlement with the Taliban was the only way to bring an unwinnable war to an end. I clearly have an excellent track record in what my noble friend Lord Owen calls appeasement.
Before staking out my distinctive position on Ukraine, let me emphasise one point on which I think we are all agreed: that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on 24 February 2022 was an act of aggression against an independent state contrary to the UN charter and fully deserving of the condemnation it received in this country and around the world. I would go further and say that it was worse than a crime; it was a blunder, since it achieved the exact reverse of what Putin intended, alienating Ukraine irretrievably from Russia. As I said a year ago, you do not call Ukrainians your brothers and then try to bomb them into submission. That is common ground.
Where I deviate from the consensus is in rejecting the possibility of a Ukrainian military victory at the present level of economic and military deployment. This leaves three alternatives: economic and military escalation, a long stalemate—a period of frozen war—or negotiations to end the war as quickly as possible. I favour the last. Supporters of the present policy are committed to the first option, a complete defeat of Russia, which means escalation, or they are resigned to a continuation of the present position. Let us be clear about this: driving the Russians out of all the territory lost since 2014, plus reparations for all the damage they have caused, is Zelensky’s war aim, and it is the stated objective of our Government as well. They are very cagey about it if one asks what the end game or the condition for ending is, but it is clear what it is. As James Cleverly stated on 23 August:
“Be in no doubt, the UK and the international community will never recognise Russia’s illegal annexation of Crimea, or any Ukrainian territory, and will stand with you for as long as it takes”.
That is the Government’s official position.
Complete victory, in this sense, is the key to what all supporters of the present policy want—such as the Nuremberg court, suggested by the noble Baroness, Lady Kennedy, which depended, as she knows, on the complete defeat and occupation of Germany—reparations by Russia for its aggression and, of course, regime change in Russia and an end to the Putin system. Short of a complete defeat of Russa, I do not see how any of these goals of holding Russia to account can be achieved. They are the necessary premise of the policy, and it is not surprising that this is the official policy. A lot of the moral force behind it depends on viewing the Russian action in Ukraine as unprovoked—“brutal and unprovoked aggression” is the commonly used term. Yet, how can you take the notion of unprovoked aggression seriously? As the noble Lord, Lord Owen, and I noted in a co-signed letter published in the Financial Times soon after the outbreak of the war, Russian hostility to NATO expansion has been constant since 1991. We wrote:
“NATO Governments have rightly said they are willing to address Russia’s security concerns, but then say in the same breath that Russia has no legitimate security concerns because NATO is a purely defensive alliance”.
This has been the contradiction at the heart of Western policy on Russia and, in my view, eventually provoked a Russian response.
To say that the Russian attack was provoked is not to say it was justified; that is an important distinction for clear thinking about peace prospects. The only point I make is that a careful look at the background to the war is needed to judge the scale of Putin’s ambition, to judge whether he is a Hitler—an increasingly common comparison—and therefore what a justifiable endgame might be like.
There is evidence that our Government have not only endorsed President Zelensky’s war aims but helped define them. There is so much that we do not know about this and so much misinformation on both sides. I agree that there is much more misinformation on the other side than on our side, but there is a hell of a lot of misinformation on our side as well. Is it true, for example, that on a visit to Kyiv in April 2022, Boris Johnson strongly advised Zelensky not to sign any peace agreement, assuring him of continuing western support, come what may? I do not know, but it has been widely said that it aborted what were then promising peace negotiations.
Behind the Government’s reluctance even to whisper the language of peace is their failure to recognise the extent of Ukraine’s victory. Ukraine has fought for its independence and won, much as Finland did in 1939-40, although Finland’s independence did come at the cost of some territory. If we could think of the Ukrainian achievement in these terms, we would be much less hung up on defining victory in terms of the reconquest of every inch of territory it has lost since 2014.
Apart from these general considerations, the war aims espoused by our Government are unachievable. Ukraine is not in a position to fight the kind of war it can win. Its overhyped counteroffensive has stalled, and most military experts believe that inconclusive trench warfare will be the order of the day for months to come. In those circumstances, there will be a strong temptation on our side to break the stalemate by progressive scaling up of warfare. Escalation has already started. At his meeting with Zelensky at Chequers in July, our Prime Minister confirmed that we have provided Ukraine with long-range cruise missiles and attack drones with a range of 200 kilometres. The longer the war goes on in its stalemated form, the greater the temptation to supply Ukraine with longer-range weaponry that could hit targets deep inside Russia and involve NATO military forces in direct attacks on Russian military positions.
I and others have warned about the danger of nuclear escalation. We all hope that China’s veto on the use of nuclear weapons will be binding on Russia, but it would be very imprudent to expect it to hold in the event that the Russians face a catastrophic military defeat or failure on the ground as a result of NATO support for Ukraine. An important contribution by the defence analyst Charles Knight argues that the Ukraine war presents a greater nuclear risk than the Cuban missile crisis, calling for careful rationality and restraint by Russia and the United States. Can the Minister assure us that the Government have not broken off all contact with Russia’s leaders and that behind official policy façades and smokescreens, Putin and other Russian leaders know that there are feasible endgames that avoid either total Russian defeat and humiliation or inexorable progress to Armageddon?
My dream is of a congress of London to bring peace to Ukraine as the Congress of Berlin pacified the Balkans in 1878, but we await our Disraeli.