War in Ukraine: Third Anniversary

Laurence Turner Excerpts

Thursday 27th February 2025 Commons Chamber

[Laurence Turner (Birmingham Northfield) (Lab)]

I thank the members of the Backbench Business Committee and the right hon. Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Sir Iain Duncan Smith) for granting and leading the debate.

Three years ago, we watched as missiles rained down on Ukraine from Kharkiv to Lviv, damaging even the Holocaust memorial at Babyn Yar. Anyone who has stood in that space will share the sense of revulsion at that desecration. A motorised column, reported to be some 40 miles long, advanced on Kyiv and its advance groups left a horror of murder in their wake. This was the terrible return of unrestricted industrial warfare to Europe for the first time since 1945. The goal must be stated bluntly: the Russian state seeks the destruction of Ukrainian sovereignty and Ukrainian national identity. The proof of that assertion can be found in bodies that were laid out in Izium, Bucha and Kherson, and, I fear, in many other places whose names are not known to us and that only liberation will identify.

When we think back to February 2022, we must remember the hope that could quickly be found among the despair. A small Ukrainian force defeated the Russians at Hostomel airport, and on such a fine margin, the nation may have been saved. The actions of successive UK Governments and the unity of this House have, as many other hon. Members have said, been essential to that Ukrainian struggle for liberty.

Out of war have come new bonds of family and friendship. I pay tribute to the members of the British armed forces who have trained Ukrainians and to the Royal Centre for Defence Medicine in Birmingham—they have learned from us, and, as was said earlier, we have learned from them. I also pay tribute to all those who have acted as hosts as part of the wider support network for Ukrainian refugees.

One of the most valuable things we can do in this place is repeat Ukrainian voices. I will quote one—that of Ivanna Khrapko, the youth chair of the Federation of Trade Unions of Ukraine, who it has been my pleasure to come to know over the last couple of years. Ahead of a TUC vote some 18 months ago, she said:

“Of course we want peace, more than anything. But we want a just peace, without occupiers in our country.”

As Oleksandra Matviichuk, the head of the Centre for Civil Liberties in Ukraine, which holds a Nobel peace prize, said:

“Peace cannot be reached by a country under attack laying down its arms, that would not be peace but occupation.”

I hope that message—so eloquently articulated by Ukrainians, who know the Russian regime better than anyone—is heard by all those currently making decisions about Ukraine’s future. I cannot go into detail in the very short amount of time available, but the issues identified by the hon. Member for Chichester (Jess Brown- Fuller) with regard to the Ukraine permission extension scheme have been heard in my constituency as well, and I hope that Ministers are monitoring those concerns closely.

I close by echoing one last Ukrainian voice—that of Taras Shevchenko, who wrote in a poem almost 200 years ago, also under Russian occupation:

Oh bury me, then rise you up

And break your heavy chains

And water with the tyrants’ blood

The freedom you have gained

And in the great new family,

The family of the free,

With softly spoken, kindly word

Remember also me.

The words ring true today.

If one message is to go from this House today, I hope it is this: our nation’s support for the Ukrainian cause is constant, not passing. We remember Ukraine, and we will stand with Ukraine and with our Ukrainian friends to the end—to the very end—and to the hoped-for day, as hard as the path may now be to imagine, when all Ukraine will be free.