Ukraine

Baroness Neville-Jones Excerpts

Friday 25th February 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Neville-Jones (Con)]

My Lords, I was in Germany when the wall fell. It was a marvellous moment to have the whole of our continent back instead of being faced by a line through the middle of Germany—just a few hundred miles from us, after all. That was, for practical purposes, as far east as one could go in those days. I never thought that I would have the pleasure of seeing all that reversed in my lifetime, but it was. Now we travel backwards as Russia occupies Ukraine.

It is pretty clear, I think, that Putin intends to oust President Zelensky and his Government and imprison him if he can, if not worse. A puppet regime will be installed, and the country will be ruled with an iron fist to counter what I think will be the inevitable insurgency.

I have to say, I have some doubts about the thesis that Putin really fears democracy, certainly in any normal sense of the word. I think he has a profound contempt for it, which is why there is some trust in the thesis that he has almost certainly taken on more than he thinks and understands in trying to hang on to a Ukraine that has learned about different ways of running society. I hope that will prove to be the case.

Sadly, as the speeches in this House have already indicated, we should not imagine that this situation is going to be rapidly reversed by economic sanctions: we are talking about years at best, provided sanctions are maintained. What the noble Lord, Lord McDonald, said about China in that respect is well taken. That is an area where we will have to do some work.

In addition to the kleptocracy unit, the Government and the Prime Minister are going to need a large and well-funded—properly funded—unit to chase sanctions evasion. It is certainly going to happen, particularly in a country as well practised in criminality as Russia. On the other hand, effective enforcement may well have some beneficial political effects in that it will undermine the deal that Putin made with the oligarchs that they could make and use their money freely provided that they kept out of politics. Their political neutrality will have been for nothing, so, potentially, some destabilisation of the regime may begin.

As a signatory to the Budapest memorandum, this country has a special obligation to continue to help Ukraine. We cannot, must not, just leave Ukraine to its fate. We should certainly continue to give Ukraine the aid we can, including military aid, though we must be careful not to pursue policies which merely aggravate its suffering.

As other noble Lords have said, there will be an early need for humanitarian aid, and there are going to be refugees. This country will not be on the front line in terms of numbers, but I trust that in the case of those who want to come to the UK, there will not be prolonged arguments as to whether they qualify to do so or whether they can be allowed to work here.

What has happened has much wider significance, of course, than the events in Ukraine, serious and extensive as these are. As other noble Lords have noted, the story of Putin tearing up the paper on which the post-war European order has rested started in 2008 in Georgia, well before the annexation of Crimea in 2014. During that time, he had considerable evidence that the political price to be paid for illegal activity would be low. We have been very slow off the mark in countering Putin’s agenda. Sanctions and reinforcing the borders of NATO to prevent any further land grabs by him are a very important but belated start in reversing the price to Putin of his aggressive policies, but we have to make that price still steeper. The Government need to put more resource and effort behind their correct contention that the security of the Euro-Atlantic area is the UK’s main focus. The peace dividend is long over.

If our aim is to bring about an isolated pariah state, not only must Europe end energy dependence on Russia; we must also increase our political resilience, rendering ineffective Russian malign interference in democracy, Putin’s manipulation of our political processes, and the daily misinformation and disinformation activities of his agencies—in sum, the hybrid warfare of which Russia is such a successful exponent. Other noble Lords have mentioned this, and it is an important part of our broadening policy.

Yesterday, in the other place, the Prime Minister implied that tackling online issues could await the online safety Bill, but that is some way off. We are admittedly in for the long haul, but we cannot wait years to get going on what is a Europe-wide issue, in respect of which some countries are much more vulnerable than the UK.

So, success requires close daily co-ordination across our continent. Ad hoc UK co-operation with the rest of Europe in pursuit of our wider security goals will not be adequate to achieve our aims. We need daily, close, structured co-operation with both the Governments and the institutions of the rest of Europe.