War in Ukraine: Third Anniversary

Johanna Baxter Excerpts

Thursday 27th February 2025 Commons Chamber

[Johanna Baxter (Paisley and Renfrewshire South) (Lab)]

I thank the right hon. Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Sir Iain Duncan Smith) for bringing forward this debate. I am happy to support it.

Like some colleagues in the Chamber, I spent Sunday evening in an underground bomb shelter in Kyiv as Russia launched a massive drone attack on the city and many others across Ukraine. While it was a terrifying experience, I was proud to join the UK’s cross-party delegation to Ukraine to mark the third anniversary of Putin’s illegal invasion. It is, of course, a grim milestone in a conflict that has claimed the lives of thousands of innocent Ukrainian civilians and displaced many, many more.

As the only female MP on the delegation, it would be remiss of me not to tell the House about the vital role that Ukrainian women are playing in this conflict. As James Brown once said, it’s a man’s world, but it would be nothing without a woman. Strength and bravery take many forms, and Ukrainian women have shown extraordinary resilience in not just defending Ukraine against Russian aggression, but rebuilding a nation that refuses to be broken.

As the House will know, when Russian forces invaded Ukraine on 24 February 2022, President Zelensky ordered that all able-bodied men aged 18 to 60 were to remain in the country to bolster Ukraine’s defences, but Ukrainian women also stepped up. Today, more than 50,000 women are signed up to the Ukrainian army. One in 10 of those women holds a senior position, and more than 4,000 are engaged directly in frontline combat. This week, I had the pleasure of meeting some of the women who have served on the frontline. There was no mandatory conscription for Ukrainian women, meaning that every single woman who has signed up has done so voluntarily, driven by their immovable resolve to defend their home.

However, women are also playing a vital role off the battlefield, and have been vital in sustaining the economy against Putin’s war machine. Ukraine has changed the law so that women can fill labour gaps in mining, transportation, logistics and agriculture, ensuring those critical sectors continue to function in the face of bombardment and destruction from Putin’s forces. Today, one in every two new businesses started in Ukraine is started by a woman. I met women this week who are camped out in drone factories, making the kit that is being sent to the frontline. Ukrainian women are doing all this while many of them have lost their fathers, brothers and husbands.

[Wendy Morton (Aldridge-Brownhills) (Con)]

The hon. Lady makes a very powerful point. There are times in this place when it is very difficult to keep one’s composure when speaking—she is doing a fantastic job. All our hearts go out to those Ukrainian people, and they certainly deserve all our support.

[Johanna Baxter]

I thank the right hon. Lady for her intervention.

While those Ukrainian women are fighting and sustaining their country, they are also the mothers to the 19,546 children who have been kidnapped by Russia. I want to tell the House why the fourth point of President Zelensky’s peace formula is so vital to ensuring a just end to this war. When Russian forces invaded the eastern oblasts in Ukraine, they deported and forcibly removed children from Ukraine to Russia. This is genocide in international law as we know it. In one case, a child only eight months old was taken by Russian forces. His new name and date of birth are unknown. Russia has consistently denied the existence of this child and thousands of others. Some of these children end up in Russia’s youth military, conscripted to fight a war against the country they were born in. This is a war crime. Before any ceasefire, the 19,546 stolen children of Ukraine must be returned home.

Talk of tanks, bullets, drones and machine guns is unlikely to move the minds of people who live so far from Ukraine. It is the stories of the women who are playing an essential role in this war that will move those minds—it is their story, their fight for survival and their fight for the values of democracy that we in this House hold so dear, and must support with all our might. Slava Ukraini.