Ukraine

Jason McCartney Excerpts

Tuesday 20th December 2022 Commons Chamber

[Mr Wallace]

We sadly saw the consequences of that in Salisbury, where a British citizen, Dawn Sturgess, was murdered as a result of the actions of the GRU, which used Novichok nerve agent on the street. Indeed, that was part of Putin’s speech when he referred to making traitors “kick the bucket”. President Putin indicated his true colours early on when it comes to respect for sovereignty.

One way in which we deal with that is using our intelligence services and our police force to protect people in this country as well as working with the international community to ensure that where we identify Russian intelligence officers acting outwith the conventions, they are expelled. We saw 163 “diplomats” expelled after the Salisbury poisoning, and continued expulsions have gone on. As hon. Members will remember, the Dutch discovered the GRU trying to bug or disrupt the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, which monitors chemical weapons use, and people were obviously expelled as a result of that. That is one of the best ways of going about it, as well as by being open and honest about standing for what we stand for. People who oppose the Russian Government are welcome here, to ensure that they too can work for the cause of freedom and international law.

[Jason McCartney (Colne Valley) (Con)]

As secretary of the all-party parliamentary group on Ukraine and someone with a considerable Ukrainian community in Colne Valley and Huddersfield—many families came to our part of Yorkshire after the second world war—I appreciate the opportunity, in my final question of the year, to highlight and welcome the amazing support that the United Kingdom has given to Ukraine in weapons, training, generators and, now, cold weather kit. How does the Secretary of State see the NATO alliance, including our new NATO allies of Sweden and Finland, continuing to take the fight to those involved in the evil invasion of Ukraine in the coming year?

[Mr Wallace]

It is important to remind the House that this is not NATO fighting Russia—that is the narrative Russia would like. NATO’s job in this process has been to improve and increase the resilience of NATO members that border Ukraine and Russia itself, to send a strong message to Russia that it is not going to contaminate further with its aggression or be allowed to push people around. Most assistance to Ukraine is bilateral—it is bilateral on many fronts. NATO has ensured it stood up its readiness. It has deployed NATO member state forces right across NATO itself. We have had troops in Poland, Estonia and Bulgaria, and flights over the Black sea by Typhoons to help with air policing in both the north and south of Europe. We have had more deployments of ships, as have many other countries. If we look at the overall map of NATO deployments, we can see that NATO has been incredibly active in not only reassuring its member states but some of its neighbours, such as Finland and Sweden, who, as yet, are not in. In summer, we sent a squadron of tanks to Finland for the first time ever to exercise with the Finnish armed forces. NATO has been busy. It is busy modernising its regional plans to come to terms with what is going to happen in the medium and long term, but at the same time it stands ready to defend its members under article 5 and article 4 should Russia take the unwise view that what it needs to do next is try to broaden the conflict.