Ukraine

Edward Leigh Excerpts

Tuesday 13th May 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hague]

This is a very important point and it is one of the things I went to Moldova to discuss with its Government. Of course, the opening up of a closer economic relationship with EU countries is a major opportunity for them. Already, when Russia stopped buying Moldovan wine, which is one of its principal exports, the EU opened up to Moldovan wine. We may have to be ready to do that in other areas of the economy as well. The Moldovan Government made a number of requests to me on my visit, and I am thinking positively about all of them and discussing them with my EU colleagues.

[Sir Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con)]

While in no way condoning Mr Putin’s actions, I just wonder if the EU has played into his hands. Should not peace and reconciliation be our objective now? Should we not in this context reassure Russia that we have no intention of dragging Ukraine into our orbit by Ukraine joining NATO, that any free trade associations with the EU will be balanced with free trade associations with Russia, as Mr Putin proposed, and that there should be full devolution for east and west Ukraine?

[Mr Hague]

We have always made it clear—and I make it clear again now, as I did in my statement—that we have always seen Ukraine as having strong relations with east and west and that it has never been our objective to pull Ukraine in a direction that means it loses its important economic and political relations with Russia. I think that that message is very clear and we are clearly supporting, in the work of the OSCE, decentralisation in Ukraine in a way that is acceptable to the whole of its population, including its regions. I therefore think the problem has lain in the perception of Russia—an inaccurate perception—rather than in the actions of western countries.