Ukraine

Iain Duncan Smith Excerpts

Tuesday 11th October 2022 Commons Chamber

[Sir Iain Duncan Smith (Chingford and Woodford Green) (Con)]

I welcome my right hon. Friend to his position. What has happened over the past few days is a war crime if ever there was a war crime, and I hope that the Government and the whole alliance will now commit to the pursuance of all those responsible for the deliberate targeting of civilian areas. There can be no respite and we should be sanctioning anybody we think has had anything to do with it.

I agree that ambiguity is not the same as no plan. The purpose behind what Putin is doing now is to split the alliance—everything he does is to split the alliance. What he wants is for part of the alliance to get wobbly and worried about the potential use of nuclear weapons and to start calling for negotiations. The critical issue here is that all of the alliance must remain united on the idea that we have a plan, but it is for the Minister to judge whether we would ever use nuclear weapons, not for us to say whether we would, and the alliance would stay together.

[Alec Shelbrooke]

I am most grateful to my right hon. Friend for his kind comments. On his point about nuclear rhetoric, we have seen this pattern before. President Putin uses it as a sabre to rattle, to try to deter us and distract our efforts in Ukraine. It simply will not work because, fundamentally, NATO is a nuclear defensive alliance, and it will be for all the time that nuclear weapons exist. It is one that has been successful, and it is one that President Putin should take notice of. What is important at this moment in time, as we talk about the nuclear sabre-rattling, is that we stay calm, analyse the situation as it is and demand that he steps back from this dangerous nuclear rhetoric, so that there cannot be any miscalculation on any side as we move forward.

On war crimes, I fundamentally agree with what my right hon. Friend said. We will do everything to bring to justice those who have perpetuated these horrific crimes, which go against every aspect of the Geneva convention. Every day that this war goes on, more and more war crimes are committed.