National Security and Russia

Bob Seely Excerpts

Monday 26th March 2018 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

The important issue is that we retain the capabilities. Those capabilities may be retained in a slightly different format and in a slightly different way, but we continue to have excellent CBRN capabilities across our whole national security structure.

I said that Russia was failing to honour its responsibilities as a permanent member of the UN Security Council. In particular, it has covered up for the Assad regime’s use of chemical weapons in Syria, especially in its attempts to impede the joint investigative mechanism of the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons. This has allowed the Syrian regime to continue to perpetrate atrocities against the Syrian people. For the past month, in contravention of UN Security Council resolution 2401, Russian air power and military co-ordination have enabled the regime offensive in Eastern Ghouta, causing more appalling suffering and impeding the heroic efforts of the humanitarian relief agencies. Over the course of many years of civil war, hundreds of thousands of Syrians have died and many times that number have been displaced, yet Russia has repeatedly failed to use its influence over the Syrian regime to bring an end to this terrible suffering.

From the outset, the UK has been at the forefront of the European and transatlantic response to these actions. In response to the annexation of Crimea, we led the work with our EU and G7 partners in constructing the first sanctions regime against Russia. We have stepped up our military and economic support to Ukraine, including directly training almost 7,000 Ukrainian armed forces personnel. We are the second largest contributor of monitors to the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe special monitoring mission. We are driving reform of NATO to better deter and counter hostile Russian activity, and our commitment to collective defence and security through NATO remains as strong as ever. Indeed, our armed forces have a leading role in NATO’s enhanced forward presence, with British troops leading a multinational battlegroup in Estonia.

In the western Balkans, we stepped up our support to our newest ally, Montenegro, when it suffered an attempt by Russia to stage a coup. Our western Balkans summit in July will enhance our security co-operation with all our western Balkans partners, including on serious and organised crime, anti-corruption and cyber-security.

[Mr Bob Seely (Isle of Wight) (Con)]

Is the Prime Minister concerned as I and others in the House are that the Russians appear to be re-arming various Serb groups in the Balkans? Why does she think the Russians are re-arming Serbian groups in the Balkans as well as doing other things, such as handing out Russian passports?

[The Prime Minister]

I know that my hon. Friend has particular knowledge and expertise on these matters. This is part of a pattern of increasingly aggressive Russian behaviour, which seeks to foment and sow discord in a number of countries around Europe. I believe that the western Balkans summit will be an important opportunity for this country, as part of the Berlin process, to enhance our security co-operation with our western Balkans partners.

--- Later in debate ---

[Martin Docherty-Hughes (West Dunbartonshire) (SNP)]

I was glad that the Prime Minister started this debate by articulating the fact that this Parliament’s argument was not with the Russian nation or the diversity of its peoples. I am sure that the Foreign Secretary will forgive me for saying this, but some of the comments from Government Front Benchers over the weekend were perhaps unnecessary as we try to promote dialogue at this extremely difficult time.

We must acknowledge that there is still no definitive proof that the Salisbury attack was carried out by the Russian regime. There has been no admission of any culpability and nor are we likely to receive any. However, there is no doubt in my mind that it fits a clear pattern of behaviour and threat escalation not only here in the UK, but in a host of other European states, particularly those on the post-Soviet periphery. This is most worrying, especially in a broader geostrategic context, as it has coincided with a defence industry modernisation programme in the Russian Federation that has led many, myself included, to fear that we could be about to enter a new and unwelcome arms race in Europe, which would be in no one’s interest.

Let us not forget that in President Trump’s first call with Vladimir Putin after his inauguration, the then new President of the United States called the New START treaty, due to last until 2021, one of the worst deals signed by the Obama Administration, saying that it favoured Russia. Let us be clear: if the New START treaty falls, a whole host of other arms control treaties and agreements will begin to unravel. This is, of course, a treaty between the United States and the Russian Federation, but the consequences for our own security are immense.

The evidence suggests that the UK is in a period of unprecedented weakness in terms of its ability to understand and interpret Russian strategy. Whether we like it or not, understanding Russia and its motivations is a fundamental duty of any Administration, yet I would contend that successive UK Governments have made a strategic decision to dismantle infrastructure, to disinvest from the necessary skills and people, and to divert funds that had previously been allocated to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, the intelligence services and the Ministry of Defence to allow those agencies to understand the Russian Federation and the old Soviet Union, and to help the Government to make informed policy decisions.

I will give one example of how this capability has been systematically dismantled. The Soviet Studies Research Centre was Sandhurst’s in-house think-tank on Russian military policy. It became the Conflict Studies Research Centre in 1992, but was then changed to a tri-service capability and moved to Shrivenham, with a resultant loss in capacity, in 2005. It then became the Advanced Research and Assessment Group in 2007 before finally folding in 2010. All that remains of the Army’s in-house capability, with its 40-odd years of institutional knowledge, is the Russian military studies archive, which is still based at Shrivenham and is itself struggling for long-term funding.

[Mr Seely]

There is one gentleman—one Russian speaker —who mans that centre. I occasionally see him when he comes down from Scotland, and he is still going through the archives, which are effectively nothing more than a hugely understaffed glorified library. I agree that it is a great shame that ARAG was done away with just a couple of years after its most useful report into the Georgian war.

[Martin Docherty-Hughes]

The hon. Gentleman’s intervention highlights some of the issues around knowledge of the Russian Federation, and I also hope to meet that gentleman very soon.

Going back to the timeline of the Russian Federation, over the past decade or so we have had the murder of Alexander Litvinenko in 2006, the invasion of Georgia in 2008, Putin’s return to power in 2012, and the annexation of Crimea in 2014. I cannot help but come to the conclusion that, as the need to understand Russia’s growing assertiveness has increased, Governments of every colour have decreased the UK’s ability to get to grips with it. Quite simply, the UK’s inability to meet the upcoming strategic challenges that the Russian Government pose should cause us all concern. As we begin to contemplate a new era of increasing turbulence in global arms control, and as the prospect of a new arms race looms, we should all be scared.

In that context, the multiple examples of Russian donations to UK political parties seem particularly misjudged, and I hope that those parties would consider returning them. The ill-gotten gains from the stolen wealth of the Russian people has flowed through this city for far too long. It has entered into the bloodstream of politics. It has purchased property and greased the wheels of the financial sector. That that has happened while Governments have run down their understanding of Russia not only is complacent, but must finally be seen as an abdication of responsibility.

We must begin preparations for the post-Putin era, but who are the potential successors? It is likely that they will be of a generation that did not know the Soviet Union like Putin did. They will probably not come with the same KGB baggage that he did. That will be a huge potential opening, with the possibility of not repeating the past mistakes, made by both sides, that have led us to this profound point. That type of thinking cannot be done on the cheap, and I fear that a diplomatic service consumed by the difficulties—that is me being diplomatic —of Brexit will be unable to find the resources to do it.

Let me end by saying that while the horrific attack carried out against Sergei and Yulia Skripal may be a new low in our relations with the Government of the Russian Federation, we must not only push back firmly, as the Prime Minister indicated, but use it as a wakeup call. The potential for future misunderstanding and miscalculation is great, but let this violence not be in vain.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sir Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con)]

Since marrying my half-Russian wife 34 years ago in the Russian orthodox cathedral in Gunnersbury, I have made it my business to try to understand Russian culture and Russian people. They certainly respect strength and people standing up to them.

It is a bit of a mystery why this murder was carried out in the way that it was. I think that it was carried out as it was to make it obvious that Russia had carried it out. There has been speculation that it was designed around the Russian election; I think that it was designed to make it absolutely clear that traitors will not be tolerated.

Let me talk a bit about the Russian mindset. When we think of people like Philby and Maclean, we look at them with amused contempt. The Russian views traitors with absolute hatred, because they have betrayed the motherland. I pay tribute to the Russian people, Russian culture and Russian literature. In Russia, there is a deep sense of victimhood, which arises from the second world war and its losses in that war. Our losses pale into insignificance compared with the losses suffered by the Russian people. That sense of victimhood is still there.

When I was last a delegate to the Council of Europe, I attended the previous Russian elections. There was no doubt that those elections were deeply flawed—Russian elections are deeply flawed—but also no doubt about the popularity of Mr Putin. Had he allowed a fair election, he almost certainly would have been elected, because the ordinary Russian felt that he was restoring some sort of pride to Russia.

There is a deep sense of despair and victimhood about how we treated Russia during the 1990s, after the collapse of the Soviet Union. I do not for a moment condone, defend or accept the annexation of Crimea, but the ordinary Russian remembers that there was an independence referendum in 1992 in which Ukraine voted more than 90% for independence and that there was an independence referendum in Crimea in which more than 90% voted for independence from Ukraine. In their view, Ukraine has always been part of Russia and is largely Russian, although they overlook the suffering of the Tatar people. All those facts are very strong in the Russian psyche, as is the attempt to detach Ukraine—which means borderland in Russian—from mother Russia.

[Mr Seely]

My hon. Friend makes a series of important points and I am glad that he is making them. There are counter-arguments to them that I shall not go over now, but does he believe that one problem is that the Russians simply cannot imagine an independent Ukrainian identity that is separate from Russia? That is one of the driving factors behind the issue.

[Sir Edward Leigh]

No, they cannot imagine that because Kiev is the source of the Rus’ people and the thousand-year-old history of the Russian Orthodox Church, to which Kiev is as much an integral part as Canterbury is to the Anglican communion. They cannot understand Ukraine as an independent entity.

None of this is to condone or in any way defend Russia. What are we going to do about this situation? First, as I said to the Prime Minister, we need to create a coalition of peace through security. Russia would not have been too concerned about the expulsion of 23 diplomats —that is tit for tat—but it would have been very concerned about the fact that the Foreign Secretary and the Prime Minister have made alliances throughout Europe, that we have been listened to and that these expulsions have been going on today. Russia will be extremely concerned about that.

Secondly, we should not seek to copy Russia’s methods or attack it in the way that it attacks. We should be careful. I know that some Members want to close down RT. I do not defend RT in any shape or form, but we should leave it to Ofcom. We should leave it to due process, not political interference from this place. We should also be careful about what we do in respect of the City of London. It has a reputation throughout the world for fair dealing. We act on evidence. If there is evidence of criminality and dirty money, we must act on it, but we cannot attack Russians who invest in our country and in the City of London simply because they are Russian. That would be a mistake.

What do we do? We make alliances, which we have done, and we expel the diplomats. The point I have been making again and again, with the Chair of the Defence Committee, my right hon. Friend the Member for New Forest East (Dr Lewis), who went way back and quoted Palmerston, is that Russians historically respect strength. We currently have just 800 men in the Baltic states. We have 150 in Poland. It is simply not enough. Surely, history proves to us that in dealing with Russia, words are not enough. Russians want to see action on the ground.

Why did we defeat the USSR in the cold war? It was not with words, but with solid determination to spend what needed to be spent on defence. We have heard the former Secretary of State for Defence, my right hon. Friend the Member for Sevenoaks (Sir Michael Fallon), and we know the stresses on the defence budget. The Foreign Secretary should echo the words of the Under-Secretary of State for Defence, my right hon. Friend the Member for Bournemouth East (Mr Ellwood), who said in the estimates debate not three weeks ago that spending 2% on defence was not enough. We should make a solid and real commitment to the Baltic states. That is what will concern Mr Putin: the determination to put troops on the ground. I know about all the pressures on the Government that are arising from health and many other things, but unless we are prepared to make that commitment—to do what Mrs Thatcher and President Reagan were prepared to do to bring down the Soviet Union—we will never counter the Russian threat.

Russia is not a natural enemy of our country. It is sometimes difficult to say that in this Chamber. We have had speech after speech condemning Russia. We are two powers at either end of Europe. From the days of Queen Elizabeth I, we have traded together. Russia is not and should not be an existential threat to this country. There has been a lot of talk about cyber-warfare. I have no doubt that Russia is attempting and engaging in cyber-warfare, but I do not believe that it could seriously affect our democracy. We should be proud of our democracy and determined that it is resilient. We must not indulge in Russophobia. We must be proportionate and determined, and we must be prepared to spend on defence what we need to spend.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sir Edward Leigh]

Of course, I would not want for a moment to disagree with my right hon. and learned Friend the Chairman of the Intelligence and Security Committee. He knows what is going on and I echo what he says: the Russians are indulging in some attempt to destabilise our values. I make no defence of what they are doing; I just think that we are a sufficiently robust economy and democracy that we can weather it and that they will not change things fundamentally in our country. We should be aware of it, but we should have confidence in our self-reliance.

It is terribly important that we are serious about this subject. There is absolutely no point in our having this debate and attacking President Putin, only for all our attacks to completely wash off the Russian people, who do not want to be an extension of western Europe in their values, economy or anything else. What will have an effect on them? Is it words in this Chamber, or actions on the ground? Are actions on the ground enough? There may be no absolute real and present danger to our country, but there is to the Baltic states, not least because of their very sizable Russian minority.

[Mr Seely]

rose—

[Sir Edward Leigh]

I must finish now.

There is a very sizable minority of people in those states who are not that well treated. Many Russians believe fervently in their soul that those minorities are not well treated and that President Putin has the right to interfere. We have NATO. The Baltic states are not Ukraine. We must not allow what happened in 1940 to happen to the Baltic states. Therefore, words are not enough. We must will the means. We must spend more on defence and put the troops into the Baltic states.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Bob Seely (Isle of Wight) (Con)]

It is a privilege to follow the hon. Member for Bridgend (Mrs Moon).

Without sounding too dramatic, the most important thing that we can do is to avoid conflict with the Russian Federation. Everything that I say is predicated on that simple point. It is also predicated on the fact that our adversary is the Kremlin, not the Russian people. Having said that, I will focus in my brief speech on three things, which are that we need to accept, to understand and to act.

First, we need to accept that we are in a new cold war with the Russians. I know that some people do not like using that term, but I think that it is valid and honest. We need to accept that President Putin is trying to undermine the current state system, that he is trying to break it, and that he may well try for a more aggressive gamble in his final term. When we have troops on the Russian border ourselves, it is complacent to say that there is not a potential existential threat—and I say that with great respect to those who have argued against that point.

Secondly, we need to understand. We need to understand the nature of Russia’s new warfare and, in general, the global threat that authoritarian states now pose to free societies.

Thirdly, we need to act, not in a shouty, finger-pointing, stick-waving kind of way, but in a consistent and robust manner. We need to relearn the art of deterrence and, frankly, the art of strategy.

We are in a new cold war. The definition of a cold war is a state of political hostility between countries that is characterised by threats, propaganda and other measures short of open war. This is not the cold war, but it is a cold war. It has probably been ongoing—although we have not wanted to recognise it—since about 2007, it was probably announced by President Putin in his Munich security speech and it has probably been in the planning since 2000. But those who were in Moldova, Georgia or such places in the early 1990s, as I was, would have seen the initial revisionist push by the Russian state or by elements within the security services—siloviki—back in the late 1990s as the Soviet Union was collapsing.

Hybrid war is one of, I think, about 25 terms that have been used thus far. It is broadly a sophisticated and integrated form of state control based on multiple forms of state power, used in a highly co-ordinated and coercive fashion. It is basically the old active measures of KGB warfare—disinformation, proxy political and armed groups, and assassinations—around which have been gathered the full spectrum of state power. The research that I have been doing in the past few years shows that there are least 50 tools. Indeed, the first characteristic of Russian contemporary warfare is what Russia calls the integrated use of military and non-military tools.

What we see as hybrid war—trolls, hackers and gangsters, although we get the Bear bombers so there is a military aspect as well—is the useable element of a full spectrum that includes nuclear weapons, nuclear theory and conventional weapons, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Rayleigh and Wickford (Mr Francois) mentioned earlier. It is important for us—especially people who are not favourable to this argument—to note that many, although not all, of the Zapad western exercises conducted every year end with a nuclear strike. Now, as anyone who has participated in military exercises knows, they are not planned for fantasy scenarios. They are planned for the most likely or the most dangerous course of action. If the Russians plan the use of nuclear strikes on cities in eastern Europe as a gambit or a tactic, one has to take that seriously. They are not doing it for a laugh; they are doing it because they are testing and looking at options.

Russian power tools can be divided into six: politics and political violence; governance; economics and energy; military power; diplomacy and public outreach; information and narrative warfare. That is all wrapped around command and control, which in our world is surprisingly short and goes up to Putin in not very many stages. That is rare compared to the west, where there is an endless chain of brigade, division, command and control before it gets to a political level. This is a highly political—Clausewitzian, I think, is the term—form of warfare.

We need to act. Russian warfare is holistic and full spectrum. Our response should be too. On top of the good things that this Government have already done, I echo the point made by the hon. Member for Bridgend that we need a commission. Back in the 1980s, the Senate’s Select Committee on Intelligence did wonderful work, methodically exposing Russian disinformation. We need Parliament or the Government to establish a working group or organisation of some kind with a UK and global remit to look ruthlessly into Russian full-spectrum warfare and expose it. We can then tell our own people what we are doing. We can tell the Greeks, people in Cyprus and people in France. We can tell the world. This is important. I have suggested this before and it would be wonderful to get some traction with the Secretary of State.

On the financial authorities stuff, we should just adopt Transparency International’s list, but I will not touch that because I know that we are doing good work there. Let us introduce a named list for agents of Russian influence in the UK, including Members of the House of Lords, some of whom I understand have been working for some very questionable oligarchs.

The US is this week bringing in a counter-propaganda Bill that puts a health warning on authoritarian broadcasters operating in the west. We need that. The Russians may well respond in kind. I do not care. We need to protect our democracy and our elections. The time to realise that our elections are being meddled with is not mid-way through a campaign; it is before.

[Vicky Ford]

On misinformation, does my hon. Friend agree that money spent on negative messaging is much more damaging than efforts that we can counter with positive messaging? Negative messaging undermines the voter and is much more difficult to counter with the positive.

[Mr Seely]

Yes, my hon. Friend makes a good point. The Russian tactic is not to build up brand A as opposed to brand B; it is just to destroy brand B. That is what the Russians did with Hillary Clinton. They were not really concerned about being nice to Donald Trump. They wanted to destroy any opposition. I suggested in one of the Sunday papers that the Russians might break into the servers of both political parties and ruthlessly leak the information in as damaging a way as possible from one, and they would do that in the weeks and months before an election campaign. That is a bit of a modus vivendi.

We need to work with the US and NATO. It is great having a few hundred troops in the Baltic, but it is entirely negligible in the great scheme of things, frankly, especially when the Russians are building up missile dominance, tactical nuclear weapons dominance, and conventional dominance. We need to think about what sorts of things NATO is doing to counter this. If we counter and block off the Russian threat, we are more likely to get them to talk, and my fear is that they will not do so.

We need to offer a grand bargain to Ukraine. The Prime Minister mentioned some money being sent to Ukraine—£42 million in total. It is about very small amounts of money. The weaker Ukraine is, the more likely that we will have great instability in eastern Europe. We need to block the Russians in the Balkans—and soon, before they export the “managed conflict” model there. We need to properly fund the BBC World Service and boost the BBC Russian Service more than is being done, although there has been good work so far. Finally, we need to look at the visa regime to allow ordinary Russians to come here and prevent dodgy oligarchs from doing so, rather than the other way round.