Ukraine

Liam Byrne Excerpts

Monday 17th January 2022 Commons Chamber

[Mr Wallace]

As my right hon. Friend knows, the Ukrainian navy was snatched, effectively, with the invasion of Crimea, which was one of the main navy bases, and it has been operating predominantly on gifts of patrol boats from the United States. That is why last year we entered into an agreement to help Ukraine to build boats to enable it to protect its coastline, and to put infrastructure investment into ports so it could start to rebuild its navy. It is important that Ukraine, the breadbasket of Europe, has the ability to export and free navigation. Russia has already threatened that, and we saw the aggressive action toward HMS Defender earlier in the year, so it is important that we help the Ukrainians to help themselves.

[Liam Byrne (Birmingham, Hodge Hill) (Lab)]

Although it is important that we take Russian security concerns seriously, we must resist at all costs any attempts by Russia to re-imperialise eastern Europe. May I press the Secretary of State on two dimensions of his twin-track strategy? First, how ready is NATO to accede to requests to join not only from Finland but from countries in the western Balkans and Georgia, so that any tactical advance into Ukraine is a strategic defeat? Secondly, will the Secretary of State say a word about the intermediate-range nuclear forces treaty, because it is hard to envisage an arms control framework for Europe without some measure of control over ground-launched cruise missiles—even if they are non-nuclear—on the continent of Europe?

[Mr Wallace]

On the latter question, may I write to the right hon. Gentleman about where we are with that? Overall, as I said about strategic treaties, better transparency is really important. The last thing any of us wants is a growing arms race, but we want to have confidence that as the technology grows it does not become more dangerous, and the treaties can adapt with technological growth.

What is the narrative that the Kremlin does not want to hear, but is true? The No. 1 point is that it has been shown that a consequence of this aggression is the expansion of NATO, not a contraction, and plenty of other countries are watching. If there is one message I want to get to President Putin it is that others are watching, and the track record shows that they will do the opposite of what he wants when he behaves in this way.