Ukraine

James Gray Excerpts

Tuesday 11th October 2022 Commons Chamber

[Alec Shelbrooke]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman and I completely agree with him. We must not underestimate the scale of the atrocities that are being committed, which are war crimes. Many Members of the House have served in the military, and many have been in the battlefield. They are trained to the laws of the Geneva convention and the laws of the battlefield, as are many people in Russia—certainly the Russian leaders will know those laws. There are consequences to breaking them, and I am proud that we are putting funding, investment and resources into the International Criminal Court to bring those who do so to court. I know that whatever we do will have support across the House. We have to say that it does not matter who someone is, from a squaddie to a general—if they have committed a war crime, we will find them and send them to prison. If they do not believe that, they should remember that we are still sending former SS officers who are almost in their hundreds to prison today.

[James Gray (North Wiltshire) (Con)]

The Russian doctrine of escalate to de-escalate almost certainly means that when the rats are cornered—and the rat Putin and his rat-like friends are cornered right now—they will lash out. That is almost without question. I hope the Minister is right in thinking that that will not necessarily be a nuclear lash-out—I think that is unlikely, although we must be ready for it—but there are many other ways he could lash out, including with cyber, chemical and biological weapons, or economic weapons. That might involve covert operations beyond Ukraine, not necessarily in Ukraine itself. What preparations has the Ministry of Defence made? I do not want details, which the Minister will quite rightly not tell us, but I hope the MOD is making careful preparations for all sorts of hybrid warfare that may now occur, including in places other than Ukraine.

[Alec Shelbrooke]

My hon. Friend raises points that we have spoken about many times in the NATO Parliamentary Assembly, and he will be aware that chemical, biological, hybrid and cyber warfare are certainly in our military planning and strategy, as indeed are nuclear weapons. Huge amounts of resources go into cyber capability and other such areas. Indeed, part of the memorandum that the former Prime Minister signed with Finland and Sweden was to give support in those areas if they were to be attacked. Overall, I assure my hon. Friend that all those issues are discussed in the round. I could not comment on specific operational capabilities, but I hope I can reassure him that those issues are treated just as seriously.