Ukraine: Non-recognition of Russian-occupied Territories

Edward Morello Excerpts

Thursday 29th January 2026 Westminster Hall

[Edward Morello (West Dorset) (LD)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Ms Butler. I join other hon. Members in congratulating the hon. Member for Leeds Central and Headingley (Alex Sobel) on securing this important debate. I will start by echoing the sentiment expressed by so many hon. and right hon. Members in this debate that any decision on whether to surrender territory is for Ukraine and Ukraine alone. Peace cannot mean carving up a sovereign European state behind closed doors; it cannot mean big powers forcing Ukraine to surrender its land and its people.

We must not accept the principle that borders can be changed by force or by coercion, whether in Ukraine or anywhere else in Europe. It is vital that we stand up for the rules-based international order, even more so because there are those who flaunt it. I do not believe Putin’s vision of peace. I do not believe it is peace at all. It is a pause that will allow Russia to re-group, re-arm and return. We have seen this before in Georgia, Crimea and the Donbas.

Every inch of occupied Ukrainian land matters, whether that be Crimea, Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia or Kherson. These are sovereign Ukrainian territories occupied illegally under international law. That is why we must finally act on frozen Russian assets. Some £30 billion of Russian assets reside in the UK. Meanwhile, Ukrainian cities are bombed, children are abducted and civilians freeze without power.

In the coming days, temperatures in Kyiv will drop to below minus 20°. Thousands will freeze to death. Russia must be forced to pay for its illegal war of aggression. While our support for Ukraine is unwavering, it cannot be right that British taxpayers pay while oligarchs’ wealth remains untouched. The Liberal Democrats have been consistently clear that the legal and moral case exists, and to delay costs Ukrainian lives.

We in this House discuss the war in Ukraine often, and time and again those debates show that our support for Ukraine is near unanimous. We hear the feelings of those in this House, but the wider public conversation is often missing from those discussions.

Although we are united here, Russia is doing everything it can to divide opinion beyond these walls. It is sowing division through bots, fake accounts and co-ordinated misinformation. It is bribing politicians like Nathan Gill, the former head of Reform in Wales. It is seeking to influence elections, as I saw at first hand during my visit with the Foreign Affairs Committee to Moldova and Romania. It is painting itself as the victim despite being the aggressor, and it is brazenly attempting to rewrite reality in real time. The United States now has a President who openly flirts with the idea of handing Ukrainian land to Russia, and who has repeated Kremlin talking points.

The Minister for the Armed Forces spoke eloquently in the Chamber the other day when he said:

“there may not be a border but there is a frontline.” —[Official Report, 14 January 2026; Vol. 778, c. 1036.]

I agree, but I would also go further. Each of us is on that frontline electronically: it is our phones, our social media platforms, our Twitter feeds. Wars are not just fought with weapons; they are fought with misinformation and disinformation, with lies dressed up as common sense and comment sections filled up with bots.

I am sure many of us here have been told in person or online that it was NATO or Ukraine that started this war. That is a lie. It is a lie spread by Russia, but it is a lie that gets repeated. We must speak the truth continually and relentlessly. It was Russia that started this illegal war. It is Ukraine that is defending itself.

Here today, we must reaffirm that non-recognition of occupied territories is not a diplomatic theory. It is a line that protects peace in Europe, because non-recognition does not just happen in this House, in No. 10, in conferences or on international stages—it must happen in people’s lives too. It must happen in what they read and |in what they share.

Yesterday, the Financial Times reported that the Trump Administration have indicated to Ukraine that US security guarantees may be contingent on Kyiv agreeing to cede the Donbas—that Ukraine should withdraw from its own territory as the price of peace. That is an attempt to strong-arm Kyiv into painful concessions that are demanded by Moscow. It is not peace; it is coercion.

Ukraine has been clear: security guarantees must come before any discussion on land. Yet pressure is being applied almost exclusively to Kyiv, not to Moscow. The rules-based international order—the one that many of us learned about in schools and university, and that created stability, prosperity and the possibility of peace—allowed small nations to thrive without fear of invasion. It was imperfect, but it was grounded in rules that we believed applied to everyone.

That order is now being dismantled by messages, tweets and decisions: in the humiliation of President Zelensky in the Oval Office; in the threats to invade Greenland; in random tariffs against allies and enemies alike; in the pausing of weapons to Ukraine; and in the quiet adoption of Russian talking points about territory and responsibility. It should deeply concern us that the US national security strategy was welcomed by the Kremlin as “largely consistent” with Russia’s view.

As Prime Minister Carney said in his powerful speech in Davos, middle powers have been quiet for too long—too submissive, too willing to rely on a hegemon that may no longer share our values. The UK must recognise that we are moving towards a multilateral world where co-operation between like-minded democracies matters far more than blind reliance on a single power. We may all agree that we must not recognise Russian-occupied territories, and that Ukraine must decide what happens to its territories, but agreement here is not enough if people outside are being convinced that Ukraine does not matter, that borders do not matter and that this war has nothing to do with them.

During a Foreign Affairs Committee session, I asked Nina Jankowicz, the former director of the US disinformation governance board, about Russian interference in UK politics. She was clear: she pointed to the convergence of Russian rhetoric with that of specific voice here in Britain—their narrative echoed, amplified and normalised. We should not be surprised that the person she mentioned had a show on Russian-sponsored TV. We should not be surprised because he has personal ties to an authoritarian Trump Administration who parrot Russian talking points. We should not be surprised because he said Putin was the leader he admired the most. We should not be surprised that neither he, nor any of his party, is here today condemning Russia.

If we allow misinformation to hollow out public support, our foreign policy becomes brittle. If people stop believing that this matters to their children’s future, Russia succeeds without firing another shot. Yes, we must act abroad with our allies—those who have consistently and constantly shared our values—with weapons, diplomacy and leadership, but we must also act here at home by taking misinformation seriously, defending truth, protecting our elections, and refusing to allow bots and lies to set the terms of any debate. Ukraine must not be forced to give up territory and we must not recognise Russian-occupied land—not in this House, not in the Government and not online. Russia is trying to divide us and, for Ukraine, we must not let it.