Bernard Jenkin
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War in Ukraine
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Sir Bernard Jenkin (Harwich and North Essex) (Con)
I beg to move,
That this House again condemns President Putin’s war of aggression in Ukraine, which is nowin its fourth year of tragedy and destruction; condemns the atrocities committed by Russia in Ukraine, in particular the abduction of Ukrainian children; supports efforts to negotiate a durable and lasting peace agreement; asserts that this must reaffirm all Ukrainian sovereign territory as recognised in international law, including any occupied territories; believes that Ukraine’s sovereignty must be guaranteed by all parties including by all NATO nations and by the EU, to mirror Article V of the NATO Treaty; further believes that Ukraine must be free to sustain capability to deter a future Russian attack; also supports increased economic sanctions further to reduce Russian revenues from the export of oil and gas; and urges the Government and the UK’s allies to accelerate military support for Ukraine, and to release frozen Russian assets for the financing of increased military spending in Ukraine as soon as possible.
The motion stands in my name and those of many right hon. and hon. Members from across the House. I thank the Backbench Business Committee for providing time for this debate—the first full debate on Ukraine since February. The motion can be summarised very simply: Ukraine must and can win.
The Russia-Ukraine war was never some regional territorial dispute, as some would like to believe. It has now moved far beyond conventional geopolitics; it is not about territory and cannot be solved by Ukraine ceding territory to Russia. That is because it is an existential clash between competing visions of how global security should be organised, and indeed of the nature of our society. It is the result of a long-standing intellectual current within Russia: a mix of imperial nostalgia, nationalist theology, and a deliberate rejection of democracy and the Western rules-based order. Furthermore, that ideological framework is not fading but growing, adapting and continually finding new ways to justify the unjustifiable, both at home and abroad. Russia’s view of a desirable world order is one based on spheres of influence and the right of big countries to impose their will on smaller neighbours.
Putin and his henchmen are not politicians as we understand the word. They are intelligence officers and soldiers who have turned the tradecraft of the KGB into the statecraft of the Russian state, in the pursuit of building their world order and destroying ours. For that gang of autocrats, an independent Ukraine is not just inconvenient; they cannot tolerate Ukraine’s independence because it threatens the very foundations of their own idea of Russian identity. Their war in Ukraine is only part of a much larger war in their minds—a war that involves the United Kingdom and the rest of Europe, whether we like it or not. Yes, this war has come to us. I am reminded of the words of Leon Trotsky—and I use the word “you” advisedly as I quote him, Madam Deputy Speaker:
“You might not be interested in war, but war is interested in you.”
Putin and his henchmen have been saying for a long time that they are at war with us. In the past few weeks alone, expert commentators such as Fiona Hill, Eliza Manningham-Buller, the former director general of MI5, and Lord Robertson, the ex-Secretary-General of NATO, have all affirmed that Russia is at war with us—and yes, I mean Russia, not just Putin. This is because Putin’s gang of ideologues are skilled at exploiting the resentments of the Russian people in a highly controlled information environment, so that the people accept their lies and support what they have been told: that Russia is in some fight for its survival against the hostile west.
Some western policymakers find this reality unpalatable. They prefer the illusion that Putin might accept some compromise—some deal whereby Ukraine might trade land for peace. But let there be no mistake: that is not just wishful thinking; it is dangerous, because it both ignores the motive for Russia to wage this war and denies that Russia has already unleashed war against Europe and the United Kingdom.
David Burton-Sampson (Southend West and Leigh) (Lab)
Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
David Burton-Sampson
The hon. Gentleman is giving a great speech, and I agree with his points. With spy ships through the channel and submarines off the coast of Scotland, does he agree that it is vital for not only Ukraine but the rest of Europe that we work closely with the coalition of the willing throughout this conflict?
Sir Bernard Jenkin
Of course I agree with that, and I will come back to how we work with our allies later.
The first thing we must understand is how the character of war has changed. In today’s war, everything is a weapon: disinformation, terrorism, sabotage, assassination, psychological manipulation, malign influence, cyber-attacks, economic warfare, menacing undersea cables—even energy, food and fertiliser are used as weapons. Let us also not forget that Russia has weaponised the abduction of Ukrainian children, which is just one of the atrocities that it inflicts on the occupied territories. I am sorry that the hon. Member for Paisley and Renfrewshire South (Johanna Baxter) cannot be here, but I hope that her cause will be taken up by someone else in the debate.
Make no mistake: we are today already under a sustained assault through a co-ordinated campaign that merges all these weapons and others, and these attacks are steadily increasing in audacity and seriousness. They are sometimes reported in the press but often downplayed by wishful Governments who are unwilling to acknowledge these attacks for what they are. They can appear to be isolated acts of espionage, sabotage or diversion, but they are not. They are elements of a systematic, strategic offensive designed to undermine public trust in our Governments and our democratic systems, to fragment our societies, to establish groups that destabilise our countries from within, and above all, to probe our defences and to find weaknesses to exploit further. This is a test of the resilience of our entire society.
This is hybrid warfare, or grey-zone warfare, but the term “total war” might be more accurate as a description. “The New Total War” is the apposite title of a recent book authored by the former Member for the Isle of Wight, Bob Seely. The Baltic and Nordic countries and Poland are currently the main targets, but so is the UK. Indeed, the UK is singled out by Russia as public enemy No. 1 because Russia sees the UK, quite rightly, as a bulwark against threats and coercion that intimidate some other countries.
But grey-zone warfare is by no means the only threat the UK faces. Our critical national infrastructure is exposed, particularly offshore. NATO and the UK lack comprehensive air defence. Just this week, Putin said Russia is “ready” for war with NATO. We have to be honest when we answer this question: how ready are we?
There is also a dangerous narrative taking hold that Ukraine is losing the war with Russia in Ukraine and that we must just accept this. That is wholly wrong. There are in fact detailed assessments, publicly available, which demonstrate that Russia cannot win militarily, so long as NATO countries continue to give military and financial support to Ukraine and economic sanctions against Russia are maintained and strengthened.
Helen Maguire
Is the hon. Member aware that the Russian state is so deprived of military equipment currently that it is taking tanks out of museums to try to get them on to the battlefield?
Sir Bernard Jenkin
That is certainly true, but the Russians are also depending more and more on what they produce in their factories rather than their legacy stock, which is making the war more and more expensive for them. They are not in an ideal position.
The initial Russian dash for Kyiv was disastrous for the Russian army. The Russians failed from day one to establish air superiority over Ukraine, which is effectively a no-fly zone for Russian military aircraft. Ukraine has succeeded in developing technology and tactics that make Russian attempts to advance extraordinarily costly. Ukraine’s ability to strike at Russian military and economic assets deep in Russia is increasing. There is absolutely nothing inevitable about a Russian victory over Ukraine. If we continue to sustain Ukraine and to undermine the Russian economy with sanctions, Russia will be forced to change its calculus for carrying on.
Nevertheless, Putin is projecting confidence that he is winning, but let us be clear: this is not because of the military situation but because of a lack of political will in so many NATO countries. If Putin wins, it is only because we let Putin win, as we let him win in Georgia, the Crimea and the Russian oblasts of eastern Ukraine before he embarked on the attempt to take Kyiv. He proved that we are soft, and his confidence is based on his continued belief that nothing has changed.
It has often been pointed out that the combined GDP of all NATO is vastly greater than Russia’s, so we should have nothing to fear, but that advantage only matters if we have the will to use this economic superiority to defeat Russia’s expansionist agenda. War is about nothing if it is not about willpower. Sadly, with a few notable exceptions such as the Baltic states and Poland, we have yet to demonstrate that willpower to win.
That is particularly due to the United States. First, the vacillation of President Biden and his fear of fuelling escalation gave Russia time to build up its war machine and exploit wider alliances. Now, the despicable and disastrous attitude of President Trump seems to offer Putin the opportunity to achieve everything he wants: the subjugation of Ukraine, the humiliation of NATO and the enlargement of the Russian sphere of influence at the expense of European security. Ironically, the effect of the Trump Administration’s 28-point peace plan has been to encourage Putin to keep the war going. That is because Trump appears ready to give President Putin everything he wants—Ukraine as a Russian vassal state. There is no incentive for Putin to stop this war under these circumstances, while the US is seeking to force Ukraine and Europe to accept peace at any price. It sometimes looks as if European resolve might also crumble. Trump thinks he is the master of the universe, but he is in fact being psychologically manipulated by Putin with flattery and—I make no bones about it—with bribes.
But something positive in Europe may finally be happening. Despite the tendency of European leaders to focus on the differences between them, Merz, Macron, our own Prime Minister and the leaders of NATO and the EU have shown remarkable unity. There is a realisation that a so-called peace agreed on Trump’s terms would not be peace at all. Putin would continue his campaign by other means. There would be little or no deterrence to discourage Putin from resuming military action on some bogus pretext at some future date. As Kaja Kallas, the European Union foreign policy chief, has explained:
“Russia has never truly had to come to terms with its brutal past or bear the consequences of its actions”.
She has argued that the nature of the Russian regime means that
“rewarding aggression will bring more war, not less”.
She is right: Putin will come back for more.
The democratic world cannot forget the lessons of history. The attitude of some is an eerie parallel of what Chamberlain said about Hitler’s annexation of the Czech Sudetenland, which he described as
“a quarrel in a faraway country between people of whom we know nothing.”
Let this House never forget that Russia signed the 2004 Budapest memorandum, which probits the use of military force in Ukraine. President Putin disregarded that undertaking when he annexed Crimea and then attacked eastern Ukraine. How many times do we need to learn this lesson? In Putin’s world, Russia recognises no international law, only its own absolute sovereignty, so a Russian signature on any treaty is not to be trusted, unless it can be externally guaranteed by people who have the necessary force.
Putin is already taunting the UK and NATO with hybrid war attacks. A Russian ship firing lasers at UK military aircraft in neutral airspace would have been unthinkable just a few years ago. This cannot just be ignored. Russia is testing NATO responses and mocking our slow pace of re-arming. The consequences of remaining passive would be dire for the credibility of NATO as a deterrent force. Letting Russia have its agenda would also increase Russia’s credibility with neutral countries, at the expense of NATO and our allies. They will see the EU and NATO as representing waning powers, unable to contain Russia as we did during the cold war.
The agreement on much tougher proposals at Geneva last week, while still engaging with Secretary of State Rubio, is a real achievement. The latest news that Putin has again refused to stop the war exposes him as the true aggressor. This is a war that he could instantly stop oh so easily. So long as Europe and NATO continue to support Ukraine, and Ukraine refuses to settle on Russian terms, then Putin will not agree to a ceasefire, until he realises that there is no diplomatic shortcut open to him.
The biggest risk we face is that Trump loses interest in his peace effort and withdraws support for Ukraine. However, there is already evidence that Trump’s power over the Congress is waning. Abandoning Ukraine would split US politics. We must hope that the US will also continue with intelligence support, but we should be ready for that to stop. If necessary, Europe should offer to pay for that intelligence, if that enables that intelligence support to be continued.
Settling for a fake peace on unsustainable Trump-Witkoff terms would be far worse. We in Europe have to accept that President Trump’s actions have demonstrated that he does not care about Ukraine, and his commitment to European security is, at best, ambiguous. The right plan is for European NATO to be ready to continue to support Ukrainian resistance to Russia’s demands whatever happens, to continue to support Ukraine’s military, and to help to finance Ukraine’s increasingly effective defence industries. That is why today’s motion refers to the release of the €140 billion Russian frozen assets in Europe, which is vital. Russia will then continue to suffer the astronomical attrition, on men and matériel, at vast financial cost. More intensive sanctions must also bite on their economy.
In truth, we can kid ourselves about the Russian economy, but it remains pretty resilient. However, sanctions have reduced foreign exchange earnings by some 20%—they come only from the export of oil and gas—and Russia’s domestic banks are now the only buyers of Russian Government bonds. This is not a long-term sustainable position for Russia. Secondary sanctions applied to the Russian shadow fleet, and to countries that enable that shadow fleet to exist, have made and can continue to make the export of oil and gas less and less profitable, or even loss-making for Russia.
Above all, we see the Russian army advancing so slowly in Ukraine, taking tiny areas of land at incredible human cost. We are seeing a land war that Russia cannot win. It has taken all of this year for Russia to take the small town of Pokrovsk, and at the cost of some 100,000 casualties.
Sir Iain Duncan Smith (Chingford and Woodford Green) (Con)
They have not really taken it.
Sir Bernard Jenkin
My right hon. Friend is right: the Russians have not already taken the town, although they say they have. The US ambassador to NATO pointed out recently that a snail crawling from the Russia border westwards would now be in the middle of Poland, had it left at the same time as the beginning of the invasion—that is how badly the Russians are doing militarily.
There is no breakthrough that would give Russia strategic military success, so Putin escalates by ramping up hybrid warfare on NATO states. He wants to move the focus of the war on to fresh battlefields. He attacks Ukrainian energy infrastructure. He could launch a miliary attack on a NATO member country using a form of warfare for which that country, unlike Ukraine, is not prepared. Such an attack on an ally would necessitate a response by the UK, if deterrence is to remain credible. It might even involve UK troops in Estonia, for example. Our troops are not prepared for the kind of drone warfare that we are seeing in Ukraine. If Russia did that, what would we do? I leave that question hanging in the air.
An attack could involve a missile attack on targets within the UK, for which we are equally unprepared, or on our offshore assets. Our allies in Germany, Poland and Finland take very seriously the real risk that Europe may be drawn into a more military confrontation with Russia, and a lot sooner than is comfortable to acknowledge.
What must we do in the face of this now obvious threat to our security? We must acknowledge and explain to our population that we are indeed at war now, and we must explain the nature of the hybrid threat. We must call out Russian hybrid attacks for what they are and we must devise robust responses, as well as increasing our own defences. Are these interceptions, and no more, a sufficient response?
We must constantly adapt the use of sanctions, realising that, like any weapon, Russia will devise countermeasures to evade them. We must, as a real priority, increase our military and economic support to Ukraine, however difficult that might be. We need to make it clear, by both our words and our actions, that Russia cannot win this war. I say to the Minister for the Armed Forces, who will respond to the debate, that it is not enough for us to repeat the mantra “for as long as it takes.” What does that mean? It has already taken far too long. We must commit to supporting Ukraine until Ukraine achieves victory, and soon, and that is possible.
What does that victory look like? Ukraine must be able to sustain itself as a secure and independent sovereign state, as part of the family of free and democratic nations. Victory is no threat to Russian territory or sovereignty—there is no plan or objective to topple President Putin—but this victory is the only way to prevent Russia from discrediting NATO and corroding the confidence that we democracies can and must use to prevent despots from degrading the global international order.
To help to achieve peace, we in the UK must accelerate our own war readiness, as the Defence Committee set out in its recent report. The noble Lord Robertson of Port Ellen, who oversaw the Government’s strategic defence review, recently remarked:
“We are under-prepared…we’re under attack and we’re not safe”.
Changing that does not simply mean strengthening our armed forces, although that is essential; it also means adapting a lot of things in our country so that we can survive and fight a war. That will be difficult, even painful, so the sooner we start, the better, because it is weakness that encourages Putin—the stronger we are, the less likely we are to be attacked.
Sir Iain Duncan Smith (Chingford and Woodford Green) (Con)
I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Harwich and North Essex (Sir Bernard Jenkin) on his opening remarks, which were specific and precise; I will try not to repeat many of them, but to get into some of the other issues.
My personal connection with Ukraine goes right back to a matter of months after the original invasion. I was involved with a Scottish charity called Siobhan’s Trust, which went out there to help those who were fleeing at the Polish border. When that had settled a little, the charity decided to cross the border and carry on feeding people who had been dispossessed behind the frontline. I see the hon. Member for Macclesfield (Tim Roca) in his place; I call him an hon. Friend in this, because he came out there with me to see the same remarkable charity. It is a wonderfully bonkers British charity. The team wear kilts, put the pipes in their mouths, and dance and entertain the Ukrainians only a few miles behind enemy lines, risking themselves at the same time. They show the remarkable bond that we in this country have forged with the Ukrainians in their hour of need. The charity is peculiarly British, and that is what we are about.
We know what this is all about. We do not need this House to lead this debate. In truth, if we were to ask ordinary people on the high streets of this great country, they would immediately react, “We stand with Ukraine.” Why? Because they know what it is all about. History tells us what happens when countries fall: they do not rise again unless somebody else can rescue them. There is nobody to rescue countries like Ukraine if it is not us, after all our experiences of the second world war and our determination to ensure such a brutal war never takes place again. It is happening now.
I have to remind the US that, even if it is not a guarantor, it certainly has an obligation to Ukraine under the Budapest memorandum. It cannot sweep that aside. The obligation came about mostly because Ukraine gave up its nuclear weapons. I wonder whether Putin would have invaded if it had kept its nuclear weapons. Ukraine was misled by the west. We said that we would stand by the Ukrainians, and away went their nuclear weapons Then, of course, Putin eventually decides to invade—at first piecemeal, invading part of the territory, and then fully later on.
My hon. Friend the Member for Harwich and North Essex is quite right that the Russians have been both singularly appalling in the way that they have behaved and incredibly poor in terms of their military activity. That notwithstanding, they would never have done this if Ukraine had kept its nuclear weapons, which would have been its major line of defence.
I have travelled many times to Ukraine to visit charities and others and have spoken to many Ministers in Kyiv about the difficulties and problems, including in Kharkiv, not long after Ukraine had driven the Russians back. Another Deputy Speaker, the hon. Member for Bradford South (Judith Cummins), was with me in Kharkiv, and we saw the devastation. How quickly the Ukrainians repair it is another marvel: I saw many buildings that had been shot at and blown apart—people had died—and by the next time I went to see them, which was a year later, they were back up and standing. That is a phenomenal testimony to the capability of the Ukrainians to recognise that, despite this terrible war, they have to keep on making efforts to live as natural and normal a life as they can.
President Zelensky has rightly become the signal and the character of the defence. I know there has been a difficult relationship with the White House over his desire to wear fatigues—that strikes me as a rather petty point but, no matter how big they are, some people can be incredibly petty. His whole character, responsibility and defiance in staying in Kyiv, when Russia attacked and was determined to find and kill him, shows the courage of the Ukrainians embodied in one man. We need to support him in difficult times.
We know that Ukraine is not perfect. Which country can put its hand on its heart and say it has never had corruption? Which countries have come out of the Soviet Union and not struggled with corruption? The only way people could exist in a Soviet country was through corruption, because that was how to get things done, because things were so bureaucratic and hopeless and people were not properly paid. The Ukranians are trying to get on top of that. They want to be a democracy, and they want to have freedom and human rights. Even if nothing else had happened, surely it should have been our responsibility to stand by Ukraine in its attempt to get that done. We only have to go back 150 years in this country, and we were riddled with corruption. We changed how we ran things, we changed the civil service code and we changed payments, and we got on top of it for the most part. When we talk about our lack of corruption, it came after a number of years of hardship many years ago in our history. Those who complain about corruption and point the finger should point the finger at themselves, because it is a misunderstanding of history and our obligation to a people who wish to be free. They will one day be utterly free, if we stand with them.
Russia has engaged in appalling war crimes. If people go to the battlefield, they will see what the Russians have been doing. They deliberately target civilians, so that the military will come to try and help them, and then they get a bigger target. The whole nature of warfare has been turned on its head in Ukraine. A soldier who had had his leg blown off told me the other day, “There is no safe space behind the frontline, as there always was before. You have to go miles back before you can even begin to think of putting up some kind of hospital or first aid centre, because those drones fly all day and all night. What they do is hit one soldier and lay them out, dead or alive. Then, as the others run to him, they rain down on them with their explosives.” That is why more than 50,000 people in Ukraine today who have been serving on the frontline need prosthetics.
Ukraine has the most advanced prosthetics laboratories that I have ever seen. They could teach us a thing or two. There is a whole problem with the tourniquet, because it cannot be released. Soldiers cannot get to the wounded soldier lying on the ground, because they know what will happen if they go to them, so the wounded soldier lies, often for an hour or more, with a tourniquet destroying their arm, even though it may be saving their life. They end up with terrible prosthetics requirements into their shoulder blades. Do they moan and complain about that? No, they do not. They sit down technically and work out how to solve it. We have a lot to learn from them, including on the battlefield and how they counter the drones. The Ukranians are way ahead of us, and I hope that the MOD realises that it is not us who can teach them a lesson, but they who can teach us. I spend time trying to bring companies over from Ukraine to give us that technology on drones and all these other areas where we should learn from them.
The other point I want people to learn is that we seem to talk about Ukrainians as though they were capable of little themselves. They had no defence manufacturing capability worth talking about, but today they manufacture more than 50% of their own defence needs. They do it unbelievably efficiently and they do it under regular fire from Russia. I have visited companies in Ukraine where half of the place gets blown up and in about four days they are back manufacturing and fixing things. Those are things that we used to do when we were in the second world war being bombarded. The Ukranians show the same resilience, the same application and the same flexibility.
We must stand with Ukraine. We stand with Ukranians because of what they want to be and because it is our responsibility to defend those who seek freedom and democracy as their cause. It is as simple as that. The UK has been the most united over this, and I applaud colleagues from all parts of the House, because we have all stood together. It is noticeable that when we talk to Ukrainians, they always raise that point. The UK is united, and that is the most important point.
I will finish on sanctions. The problem for us is that we have failed to settle our sanctions responsibility to the degree that we should have. There are huge problems over the shadow fleet, as has been mentioned, and over individual sanctions, which we should have been using on a number of occasions. It is remarkable that with the one thing we had complete control over—the sale of Chelsea football club—£2.5 billion has sat there for three years, because we defined the ability to use it so poorly that there is now a dispute as to whether Abramovich’s own companies have a right to use the money, or whether we can seize it. We have to deal with this. If we cannot deal with that one issue, it shows how bad it will be for us in seeking reparations across the board.
Sir Bernard Jenkin
Do we think for a moment that Russia would pause seizing any assets it could to fund the conflict? Is it not ironic that the Russians use the rule of law against us, despite the fact that they have no respect for it themselves?
Sir Iain Duncan Smith
It is, of course, a fact that we stand by the rule of law and teach others to do so, but the reality is that this whole problem could be resolved if there was greater resolve—by the way, this is a criticism not just of the present Government but the previous one—in the Foreign Office and the Treasury to leave no stone unturned and resolve this matter by seizing the money.
Sir Iain Duncan Smith
The will is non-existent.
I will conclude by simply saying that Ukraine should not be written off. The issue is not whether Ukraine has to make a deal now because it cannot win. Winning, for the Ukrainians, is getting back their land, their rights and their country. It is written into the constitution of Ukraine that the land that Russia occupies is theirs. People talk glibly about handing over territory as a way of resolving the conflict, but this would only lead, as has been said previously, to Russia moving again within a matter of months or years and seizing the rest of Ukraine. Putin does not care about territory; he cares about Ukraine. He believes Ukraine should be part of Russia, and he will never stop. If we show weakness by agreeing to some stupid 28-point plan, which would sell the Ukrainians down the river, Putin would come back. We would walk away and say, “Well, we did our best.” That is not good enough.
I urge the Minister to make it absolutely clear that we do not agree with any of the 28-point plan, which would sell territory for peace. But it would not be peace; it would be a short-term abdication of responsibility that would lead to the death of many millions.
The Minister for the Armed Forces (Al Carns)
First, I express great thanks to the hon. Member for Harwich and North Essex (Sir Bernard Jenkin) for pulling together this debate. I have listened to the truly outstanding speeches and contributions from all Members on both sides of the House, but I would like to begin by paying tribute not to us, but to the brave men and women of the Ukrainian armed forces who, day in and day out, are fighting for national survival. They are fighting for freedom, for justice and for the right to self-determination, and I believe there is no more honourable thing to be doing.
Today in this House we have sent a clear and resounding message to Vladimir Putin that no matter how he tries to justify his illegal war in Ukraine, no matter how he blames other countries for conflict that he alone is responsible for, and no matter how he thinks he can intimidate Europe—with drone incursions, spy ships and reckless activity—we see him and we know exactly what he is up to.
My hon. Friend the Security Minister updated the House earlier on the consequences of Putin’s reckless and despicable activity here on the British mainland. Dawn Sturgess’s needless death was an unspeakable tragedy that will forever be a reminder of Russia’s reckless aggression. That is why he today announced in the House sweeping measures to include sanctions on the entire GRU—the Russian military intelligence agency—and 11 actors behind Russian state-sponsored activity.
The UK will always stand up to Putin’s brutal regime and call out his murderous machine for what it is, which is why we are united in our determination to support Ukraine for as long as it takes to achieve the just and lasting peace that the people of Ukraine fully deserve, to keep tightening international economic sanctions on his economy and to keep working with our partners to protect Europe from the threats he poses.
I thank Members on all sides for their speeches, and I would like to reflect on some of the comments and themes. The hon. Member for South Suffolk (James Cartlidge) mentioned many valuable points. The right hon. Member for New Forest East (Sir Julian Lewis) mentioned a really useful saying about NATO, and we may want to think in a similar way about these negotiations—keeping the US in, keeping the Ukraine at the very centre and keeping Europe focused. It is on the diplomatic points that were mentioned that I personally believe the Government have driven—we had a leading role in ensuring that the 28-point peace plan is relevant, has Ukraine at its very centre and has Europe all pushing together in a unified manner. Our Government and our Prime Minister have done a fantastic job in that regard.
When we talk about assets—I will talk about them in a bit more detail later—I am quite confident that by the end of the year we will, hopefully, collectively with Europe, have unlocked a huge amount of assets to apply more pressure on Russia and to fund Ukraine’s defence. For clarity, on our own readiness, by 2027 we will be spending 2.6% on defence.
The hon. Member for Harwich and North Essex mentioned that the war in Ukraine has spread, and the argument has been made across the House that we are at war. I would argue that the war in Ukraine is geographically constrained, but the conflict is not. We see that moving across and around all the conventional themes of war, specifically in the cyber domain, the influence domain right here in the United Kingdom, and, of course, in the political domain, with the funding of political parties to cause division and strife across the political divide.
The hon. Member also talked about whether Ukraine was losing. I am a firm believer, at the strategic level, that Ukraine and NATO are absolutely on the front foot. Sweden and Finland have become part of the greatest defence alliance the world has ever seen. Russia has taken 1 million casualties. It is just worth thinking about that: 1 million casualties. It is almost the population of some eastern Baltic states. It is more casualties than America took in the entire second world war. In a lot of cases, we have isolated Russia from the west. Its economy is under significant pressure and just this year it has taken 380,000 casualties on the frontline.
Sir Bernard Jenkin
I am most grateful to the Minister for giving way and for his response to the debate. I know his personal commitment to these issues is very strong indeed, but may I just take him back to the point he makes? He pulls back from the idea that we in the NATO countries are already in a kind of war with Russia. I have to tell him that there is a tendency to try to sanitise the severity of the threats we face. How effective does he think is the Government’s “conversation” with the British population about the threats we face? How successful does he think that is? A lot of us feel that we are not seeing it at all. The Government are not leading this conversation. Indeed, it is almost being shut down because of the pressures of domestic politics, and the lack of support from the public for having such a conversation makes it very difficult. Will he comment on that, because it was in the strategic defence review?
Al Carns
I thank the hon. Member for his contribution. It absolutely was front and centre of the strategic defence review. There will be a couple of announcements coming in the next couple of weeks about how we hope to change the narrative and better explain, in a relatable manner, the threats or crises that take place away from our shores and how they impact us here in the UK. A small example, although attribution and where it came from is still to be understood, is the £1.5 billion bail-out for Jaguar Land Rover. That is half the two-child benefit cap for a year. That relatable statistic suddenly hammers it home to individuals in all our constituencies. They may not be focused on international policy, but they understand the ramifications for the way we live here.
Energy prices and the cost of food—one of the biggest impacts on the cost of living—are caused by the war in Ukraine. More people were plunged into poverty across the globe because of the war in Ukraine. We need to make more of a conscious effort, collectively, to describe these threats, and how they resonate here and globally, in a more forceful manner, so that people understand why taking an active stance on some of these conflicts is equally as important not only for the countries involved but for the United Kingdom.
The hon. Member for Harwich and North Essex also mentioned, in his fantastic opening speech, NATO and whether we are ready. Another description is required when we talk about the UK and our readiness to defend. We are a part of NATO. Statistically, when we look at the scale of NATO forces available, we see that we outnumber Russia by a significant amount, whether in the air force, maritime or land domain. I agree with his comments about the remarkable unity that Europe and the UK have shown when engaging with the 28-point peace plan—in some cases rejecting it and changing it to ensure that Ukraine is at its very centre. European and UK leadership has been second to none in that space.
One subject that has resonated across the House today is the issue of the abducted children. My hon. Friend the Members for Washington and Gateshead South (Mrs Hodgson), my hon. Friend the Member for Paisley and Renfrewshire South (Johanna Baxter), who could not make it here today, and the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) have all mentioned the impact on families and children in particular. This is not new. It is part of Russian doctrine. It was used in Afghanistan. In every conflict, they round up the children, move them to Russia for re-education and indoctrination, then bring them back. We are seeing an appalling abduction of Ukrainian citizens by Russia on a scale that is described by the Yale Humanitarian Research Lab as the largest wartime child abduction since world war two. It is absolutely shocking and despicable.
The UK has raised this issue at the UN and the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe, and I pay tribute to the efforts of my hon. Friend the Member for Washington and Gateshead South in highlighting the OSCE officials in Russian custody: Dmytro Shabanov, Maxim Petrov and Vadym Golda. We have committed £2.8 million to help Ukrainian children come back, and have been an active member of the International Coalition for the Return of Ukrainian Children throughout. Since the beginning of September, the pilot tracing mechanism has already identified over 600 additional children who were deported to the Russian Federation or relocated within the temporarily occupied territories.
I agree with the view that the right hon. Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Sir Iain Duncan Smith) holds of Zelensky. His leadership, courage, determination and conviction are an example to not only the Ukrainians but the world of how a state that in some ways is dwarfed by Russia has stood up against one of the biggest militaries in the world. I also agree, being relatively self-critical of the west, about there being some institutional arrogance when it comes to defence technology. That links to the point made about Ukrspecsystems. There are false lessons from Ukraine, but there are many more real ones that we need to adhere to, learn and integrate into our armed forces—in particular, about the integration of uncrewed systems data and electronic warfare. This point will be made throughout the defence investment plan. To be clear, we did not agree with the 28-point peace plan, and have worked very hard to change it, to put Ukraine at the very centre of it, and to look at what is acceptable. I hope to discuss some of the implications of that later.
The hon. Member for Epsom and Ewell (Helen Maguire) brought up a really good point about unexploded ordnance and the use of landmines in the conflict. There are millions of landmines, now rendering large swathes of Ukraine inaccessible to the farmers or families who once owned the land. It will be a generational problem to solve, and one that Members from all parties will need to deal with collectively.
From my perspective, our support for Ukraine is unshakeable. I say to the Father of the House, the right hon. Member for Gainsborough (Sir Edward Leigh), and my hon. Friend the Member for Llanelli (Dame Nia Griffith) that, from my perspective, we are doing the most we can to support Ukraine. We are spending £4.5 billion on military support to Ukraine. We are leading the Ukraine Defence Contact Group, which has already delivered and harnessed £50 billion-worth of support for Ukraine. To make that more tangible, that is 5 million rounds of ammunition, ranging from 60,000 rounds of artillery all the way through to 100,000 drones this year alone and 140 lightweight missiles. There is much more to do. The defence industry is powering up across Europe. If we look at our defence industrial base, and our societal resilience in dealing with this conflict, I think we can see that we are waking the sleeping tiger in Europe.
I also think that the constant threats and hyperbole from Vladimir Putin are a direct consequence of significant pressure, and of him having to live with the moral indignation of being responsible for over 1 million casualties and the devastation of large swathes of Ukraine. Like the right hon. Member for Gainsborough, I personally do not think that there is division in the UK; we are unified across the parties. I do not think that there is division in Europe, particularly among the large players in this space. I believe that we have unity when it comes to the 28-point peace plan and putting Ukraine at the very centre of that negotiation. Ukraine must keep fighting, and the UK will be with it throughout.
The hon. Member for Harwich and North Essex, my hon. Friends the Members for Leeds Central and Headingley (Alex Sobel), and for Llanelli, and many others mentioned frozen assets. We support the continued pressure on the Russian assets that are fuelling this illegal and barbaric war across Ukraine, and the pressure on Russia’s economic tentacles, but we must put increased pressure on Russia. It is worth noting that we have clamped down on Russia’s war machine and economic support mechanism. We have already sanctioned over 2,900 people and companies, and with our allies, we have already put in place £450 billion-worth of sanctions, which is the equivalent of two years of fighting.
We are moving forward with plans to use the full value of immobilised Russian sovereign assets to support Ukraine. We welcome the European Commission’s action just this week to bring forward concrete plans to meet Ukraine’s urgent financial needs—plans that will support the defence of the nation. I look forward to hearing more detail on that, hopefully by the end of this year.
Sir Bernard Jenkin
Within the last few minutes, I read that President Zelensky is on a state visit to Dublin, but his arriving plane was buzzed by four mysterious military-grade drones. That is what we are up against, and there is not sufficient awareness of that. The fact that this Chamber is sparsely populated this afternoon suggests that this whole debate is yet to get into the mainstream of our politics and our national discourse. I emphasise again that the Government have yet to deliver the national conversation that they promised in their strategic defence review. I recognise the efforts that people in the defence community are making, and that includes Ministers, but involving the whole of Government, the whole of the Opposition and the whole of politics is what is required.
I hoped that this debate would demonstrate the unity across the House that has indeed been shown today. I thank every colleague, from every part of the House, for their contribution, and all those who signed the motion who could not be here today. The motion was intended to be a clear statement of our national intent. I imagine that it will go through without a vote, so that the signal will be sent to the world about what this country believes, and what it believes must be done. But I come back to the point that we need to underline our will and signal the force of our intent if we are to achieve what we want to achieve, and to lead our allies from the front. I believe that the United Kingdom is capable of doing that, and is to some extent doing its best to achieve it, but also that other countries are looking to us to take a stronger lead and set the best example, in line with the achievements of our history and our values. I am very grateful that this debate has taken place, and it has been an honour to lead it.
Sir Iain Duncan Smith
On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. You sit in the Chair and are not allowed to speak, so many in the House may not realise your role in all this. You have visited Ukraine with me and others, and you have been a stalwart champion of all that we have been debating today, so I wanted to make sure that the House recognised the incredible attention and support that you have given.