Ukraine

Baroness Falkner of Margravine Excerpts

Thursday 3rd April 2014 Grand Committee

Asked by

[Baroness Falkner of Margravine]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what is their assessment of the political situation in Ukraine.

[Baroness Falkner of Margravine (LD)]

My Lords, I start by thanking the several noble Lords who have taken a Thursday afternoon out after a long week to take part in this debate. I will not have an opportunity afterwards, so I thought that I would get in my appreciation of this fine attendance on an important matter here and now.

In 2014, as we look back on the centenary of the Great War, a plethora of new books reminds us that events can be overtaken by miscalculation compounded by misunderstanding. When tactics supersede strategy, an inevitability takes hold. Against the memory of those historic events, it is important neither to underestimate the events in Ukraine of the past few months nor to overstate parallels with the Cold War or other analogies. At this point, we cannot know where the invasion of Ukraine by Russia will lead us.

However, we can be sure of certain things: whether this is an act of historical significance is not in doubt. It has marked a change in the world order. In the past 20 years there has been a debate about the change in power politics, evidenced in the demise of bipolarity, with unipolarity and the US moving to hegemonic status after the demise of the Soviet Union. Alongside this has been the challenge to its neighbours posed by the rise of China and, in response, the US pivot to Asia.

The question in international relations scholarship in the past decade has been whether we are seeing the emergence of a multi-polar world, but one where essentially western norms and values have prevailed, with buy-in from emerging powers into “western” institutions, or whether we are living in “no one’s world”, as described by the American academic Charles Kupchan, where no single overwhelming power is dominant and norms are in a state of flux.

The events leading up to 27 February, when Russia invaded and seized Ukraine’s Crimean peninsula, seem to point in the direction of a passing of the old order, or indeed, in the words of the Economist, the forming of a disturbing “new world order”. The invasion of a sovereign country other than as an act of self-defence or under international humanitarian law, sanctioned by the international community, cannot be a light thing, even when carried out by a former superpower wielding a United Nations Security Council veto.

The excuses given by Mr Putin in drawing parallels with NATO actions in Kosovo are absurd. In Kosovo, there was grave and present danger of a severe humanitarian catastrophe after evidence of widespread ethnic cleansing in the immediate region. Attempts were made to seek consensus in the UN Security Council but, in the face of a Russian veto and after some deliberation, it was decided to take action through NATO.

Even more absurd are Russia’s claims that the Government in Ukraine are illegitimate and that, hence, Russia will not enter talks. In Ukraine, after months of ongoing protests against the elected Government and more than 100 people killed—mostly at the hands of state security snipers deliberately shooting to kill—it was the Parliament which, on 20 February, approved a resolution calling for a return to barracks of the military and a ban on firearms. Once the police and military conformed with the vote in Parliament, Mr Yanukovych and his allies decided that the game was up and fled to Russia. On 22 February, the President was deposed for abandoning his duties and an acting President was appointed. From that point, it took a mere five days for Russia to take Crimea.

This is not the first time that an elected Government have been driven from office, and it will not be the last. Only a deaf and blind leader can cling on to office when all around him see evidence of egregious corruption, human rights abuses and kleptocratic governance. Of course it is preferable that there be constitutional measures, such as votes of no confidence, to oust those who command no support, but the fact remains that Yanukovych lost the support of his own majority in Parliament.

I turn to the here and now and the consequences of the events of the past few weeks. The most immediate are for the people of Ukraine. They have 40,000 Russian troops massed at their border with full logistical back-up support for invasion, including military hospitals. The threat is palpable. According to NATO, a Russian invasion could be accomplished in between three and five days, with the potential to take Moldova and Transnistria as well.

Alongside that are Ukraine’s economic woes. Without deep and structural reform, and with sovereign default on the horizon, the EU offer of a $15 billion loan is welcome. Ukraine’s currency fell by 30% between November and late February, and the Government are now running out of funds to cover public employees’ salaries. Although it is entirely understandable for the IMF to seek to protect its funds from corruption by sticking to its stringent conditions and reform agenda, it is surely somewhat dangerous for the fund and the EU to dither while Russia destabilises the interim Government from within, as well as starving them of energy.

I hope that the Minister will be able to tell us what conversations the Government are having with the IMF about a speedy allocation of funds and whether the UK is having conversations with the German Government about additional bilateral loan guarantees by those countries within the EU which can give—a coalition of the more solvent, perhaps, rather than a coalition of the willing.

There is also the present question of the Ukrainian elections on 25 May. What arrangements are being drawn up with the OSCE for the elections, which are now only some five weeks away? There has been gnashing of teeth in European capitals about the Kerry-Lavrov talks. In my book, they are a welcome development. They are less neo-imperialism and perhaps more pragmatism. EU foreign policy co-ordination is still embryonic. I experienced that myself last weekend at the Königswinter conference in Cambridge, where my German colleagues took a rather different view. “Our histories are different”, they said, “hence the lack of an EU strategic Russia policy”.

For Ukraine, after the formation of a new Government, it is imperative that that Government build a consensus for enhanced protection for minorities and entrench it constitutionally with strengthened regional autonomy. It is a relatively new state, and centralised structures seldom work when there is significant diversity in the population. Alongside Ukraine, we, the international community, should not write off Crimea. There is a tendency among policymakers to write off a land grab by Russia. There is an element of fuzzy historical referencing accompanied by a shrug of the shoulders.

I make it clear that I am not advocating a NATO invasion to free Crimea, despite the illegitimacy of its referendum and return to Russia. There has been a change to the territorial integrity of a sovereign state by its neighbour. Should that situation be accepted unchallenged, it presages similar attempts across the world. There will be few countries with minority populations across borders which cannot but worry about the consequences that will flow from Crimea. So every instrument of negotiation from asset freezes to sanctions and a recalibration of hard power as deterrents must be employed to sanction the aggressor.

The costs will be borne by us all, the Russians as well as the EU states, but the upholding of international law through sanctioning an aggressor may be the lesser cost in the long run. If by demonstrating that there is a united response from the West a negotiation can indeed be brokered with Russia along the lines that Crimea be reinstated within Ukraine, with an agreement that Ukraine be not given NATO membership for a period, that would appear to be the minimum acceptable outcome.

In concluding, I return to my opening remarks about the importance of upholding international law. Assurances need to be credible to be worth the paper they are written on. One casualty of the Crimean invasion is that there is less confidence in the West’s assurances in a post-Crimea world. This will undoubtedly affect our efforts to curb nuclear proliferation but will also diminish the West’s standing in a host of other matters.

Without being slavishly pro-American, there are many in the UK and Europe who have regretted the US’s increasing isolationism. Indeed, it was notable that last week was President Obama’s first visit to Brussels since his first election in 2008. While we have welcomed the closer trade links to flow from TTIP and, belatedly, a new emphasis on EU-US co-operation across foreign affairs generally, the events of the past few weeks, too, have illustrated the importance of hard power as a deterrent. It is evident now that we cannot neglect any of these aspects of power politics; it is better to learn those lessons now than allow an orderless world to emerge. I look forward to the Government’s response to these challenges.