Ukraine

Lord Balfe Excerpts

Thursday 16th June 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park (Con)]

I thank the noble Lord for his comments. There is always a risk that people adjust to appalling things, and things which are entirely abnormal become normal. Before coming to the Chamber, I had a meeting with a group of extraordinary members of the Ukrainian Parliament, representing different political parties. Perhaps the noble Lord met the same formidable group, and so will know what I mean. This was exactly the point that was made to me: even for people in Ukraine, the sound of sirens, which would have put the fear of God into anyone when it first began, is becoming normal; people are gradually becoming used to them.

This is a risk, and there is no point pretending that it is not, but our job—not just as a Government but for all of us here, with our various platforms, and for anyone following this debate—is to do everything we can to keep this issue as live as possible in people’s minds. What is happening today is no less serious than it was a month ago, when this is all we were talking about. The noble Lord makes a very important point. We cannot dictate what occupies people’s attention, but we can do everything we can to raise this issue at every opportunity. The fact that we speak more or less with one voice in this place, as they do in the other place, helps. I take the noble Lord’s point very strongly.

In the meantime, in the UK, as with all such issues, particularly a dynamic situation such as this, we need to approach the problem with as open a mind as possible and look for more opportunities to provide more support to Ukraine. As the MPs I met said, they need a strong Ukraine and a weak Russia. There are a number of ways in which we have contributed already to tipping the balance.

But, of course, we can do an awful lot more, and we look for those opportunities wherever they are. We heard more about accelerating sanctions from the Foreign Secretary today, and we will need to hear more going forward—not just from the UK. We need to accelerate the process of unhooking the West from energy dependence on Russia. Since the conflict began, vast sums of money have continued to flow into Russia, and everyone acknowledges that that has to stop. I do not pretend that it is easy, but we have to be single-minded in our pursuit of that independence.

We need to be very clear—I can confidently reassure noble Lords that the UK has been from the start and will continue to be—that, whatever the nature of any settlement on this issue, it has to respect the sovereignty of, and be led by, Ukraine. It also has to acknowledge and reflect Ukraine’s right to determine its own future—it is not for the UK to be prescriptive in any way. But our starting point is of course to drive towards Russia simply leaving Ukraine alone, which is all that Ukraine is asking for at this point. We should not make the kinds of concessions that I think some are beginning to wonder whether we should pursue.

[Lord Balfe (Con)]

My Lords, I will follow up what the noble Lord, Lord Cromwell, said. If we do not dial down this conflict, it could get completely out of hand and lead to an all-out war, which of course we could not win. I urge the Minister to try to get a common front among NATO members to make it clear to the Russians that Article 5 will be applied and vigorously defended for NATO members. Earlier this week, threats to Lithuania were made in the Duma by just a few Russian MPs. We have to start drawing lines because, at the moment, we are just waging a proxy war to destroy the Ukraine—all of the missiles that we are sending are actually blasting the Ukraine to pieces. So, unless we can dial down, we will not get anywhere.

Finally, President Macron, Chancellor Scholz and Prime Minister Draghi are in Kyiv. Of course, if we were in the European Union, we would be part of that central influencing body; we are not, but we ought to get behind them and try to make some form of move towards dialling down this conflict work.

[Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park (Con)]

I apologise for the length of my previous answer—I have not fully mastered the protocols of this format, and I thought that I was meant to be giving a more substantial answer. I thank the noble Lord for his comments. We want to be as aligned as possible with our allies; this is not about politics, Brexit or any of the other issues that have preoccupied us so much for the last few years. We need alignment, and we work very closely with our friends in Europe. We do not need to be in the European Union to be aligned on these issues—we have the necessary discussions in good faith and on a regular basis.

I simply echo an earlier comment: there is a very real sense that if we, our friends and allies or Ukraine were to concede so much as an inch to Russia, it would then almost inevitably seek to take further inches and end up with the full mile. Clearly, no one wants escalation into full-scale global war—you would have to be insane to crave such a scenario—but it is precisely by not appeasing the kind of figure that currently rules in Russia that the risk of further escalation of this conflict can be prevented or at least minimised. So we are on the right track.