UK-Ukraine Credit Support Agreement

Baroness Liddell of Coatdyke Excerpts

Wednesday 5th January 2022 Grand Committee

[Baroness Liddell of Coatdyke (Lab)]

My Lords, I am delighted to follow the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, and that very good analysis of the situation in which we find ourselves at the moment. I pay tribute to the chair of the International Agreements Committee, on which I serve, for bringing this debate to the House. With both the noble Lord, Lord Astor, and my noble friend Lord Foulkes, we have looked at the broader issues that surround what might be going on in the mind of President Putin.

It is important that this House has a chance to debate this intervention, because the clock is ticking, and quite loudly, at the moment. It is not really our job on the International Agreements Committee to comment on geopolitical issues, but frankly you would have to be on a desert island not to be able to appreciate the extent to which there is a threat to peace from the activities of the Russian President. To have 100,000 soldiers on the border with Ukraine is terrifying, particularly to the people of Ukraine who have suffered so much. Yet President Putin has laid the blame for this at the door of NATO encroachment. He omits mention of the annexation of Crimea and what has happened with the military conflict in the Donbass, where fighting continues. Some of the most recent figures are even greater than those quoted by my noble friend Lord Foulkes; I think they are talking now about 13,000 deaths in the Donbass because of the conflict there.

Alongside the UK, as the noble Lord, Lord Astor, has pointed out, a number of other countries have activated military training, and 22,000 Ukrainian troops have benefited from UK expertise. About two weeks before Christmas, the Ukrainian Government warned that Russia could invade the country in the next few months. Indeed, their Defence Minister said in early December that the most likely time could be at the end of January 2022, about three weeks from now. A US intelligence document, revealed in the Washington Post, stated that up to 175,000 troops was the likely deployment by the Russians.

The agreement that we are discussing today will not alleviate that immediate problem with Russian aggression, but it will help in the future, giving Ukraine the benefits of world-class vessels and training, as the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, has pointed out. Our own Government have gone on record with the view that threatening and destabilising behaviour is unacceptable and will have costs.

Giving Ukraine the capability to manage more effectively through a UK-trained naval service is a welcome development. I live in the middle of shipbuilding land in Scotland. I live on the banks of the River Clyde and I see military vessels going up and down it regularly. I therefore have a grasp of the extent to which we, not just in Scotland but in other parts of the UK, are a world-leading country, and we want to pass that knowledge on.

The enabling of Ukraine to purchase two minesweepers and retrofit UK weapons systems to existing weapons, and of specified UK contractors to work with Ukraine to build eight missile ships and a frigate, is also a welcome recognition of our capabilities in shipbuilding. It fills the gap in our access to the Black Sea which the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, talked about and it is a way of mitigating future aggression by Russia. As the noble Lord, Lord Astor, pointed out, this initiative builds on Operation Orbital, which is non-lethal training, as the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter, pointed out, and capacity building. That, as we learned in November 2019, has been extended to 2023. In August 2020, the Secretary of State also announced that the UK would lead a maritime training initiative to help the Ukrainian navy to work more closely with international partners.

We look forward to continuing to negotiate the position with Ukraine to agree the specific financial arrangements around the agreement. I say to the Minister that it would have been of use to have had information in the Explanatory Memorandum on the other countries that have similar agreements. Perhaps the Minister can rectify that, either by a letter if it is confidential or perhaps in his response today. I support the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, in his request for knowledge of the policy context that backs the agreement. It makes sense to have a get-out clause in relation to corruption in international transactions. Not all people around are good; you can get bad people around as well.

The new arrangement with Ukraine is a step change away from the decision not to make lethal weapons systems available, but it is a direct consequence of the escalation prompted by Russian activity. In the recent integrated review of security, defence, development and foreign policy, the Government made clear that they consider Russia to be

“the most acute threat to our security”

at every level, from the mobilisation of troops to cyber activity, as the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, has mentioned.

The upcoming meeting between NATO Ministers to discuss the Ukraine situation is very important. Perhaps the most important part of it is to underline again and again that the territorial integrity of Ukraine and the belligerence that has been shown make it imperative that there is unity within both NATO and the EU in relation to Ukraine.

In preparation for next week’s meeting between President Putin and President Biden, the Russians outlined their demands, as the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, pointed out: a ban on NATO expansion, and no offensive weapons near the Russian border. Can President Putin not see that the aggression shown to the now independent countries of northern Europe caused 14 central and eastern European countries to join NATO between 1999 and 2020? They look to Article 5 of the NATO agreement to give them protection. I also worry slightly that part of President Putin’s plan is to wrong-foot President Biden, and it is very important that we keep a weather eye on that.

However, other areas and countries nearby are in some difficulty. Finland and Sweden have had additional cause for concern for 30 years. These fiercely independent countries have come closer and closer to NATO. They, too, fear the limitations on democratic and independent states. At the moment, it does not look likely that Ukraine, or even Finland or Sweden, will join NATO, but who knows what the outcome will be if Russian expansionism continues? In 2016, Sweden and the Finns signed host nation support agreements with NATO, which offer alliance forces access to Swedish and Finnish territory in the event of a military emergency.

The noble Baroness, Lady Hayter, alluded to the disbanding of International Memorial, which was a way of putting right some of Joseph Stalin’s atrocities. What are we playing at here? Are we trying to go back to the Russia that was the land of Joseph Stalin?

I was in Russia at the time of the fall of communism. I had only ever seen tanks in museums; I had not seen them go down shopping streets. It was an eye-opener for me. The shops’ counters were empty. The only way of totting up how much you had bought was with an abacus—and this was only 20 years ago. I was there for a defence symposium organised by the University of Edinburgh. I was doubly shocked that there was no food. All people had to eat were tomatoes and cucumbers. I have not eaten a cucumber since then because a week of eating cucumber was a bit too much, frankly.

I was outside the Russian White House when Boris Yeltsin addressed the Soviet Union and the world. I was excited to be at the heart of something like that; it was a world-breaking opportunity. However, when I looked around, the assembled crowds seemed less than impressed. There was an air of cynicism and “So what?”. I asked the interpreter who was with me about it. He shrugged and said, “They are all the same. We are just pawns in their power games.” That is what is happening here. I have thought about that a lot over the past week.

We need to see Russia play a much more positive role in the modern world, and not just in a world that glorifies Stalin and the suffering of the Russian and Soviet people. Putin seeks to rebuild an empire. Why can he not concentrate on improving the prospects of the people in his own country? Let us hope that common sense and humanity are in the minds of the negotiators on all sides in the next few days. Our assistance in helping Ukraine to develop a world-class navy will come too late for the putative conflict, but let us hope that it will give security to protect the Ukrainian people in future. They deserve a break; let us see if we can give it to them.