Ukraine: UK Policy

Lord Banner Excerpts

Monday 17th March 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Banner (Con)]

My Lords, I would like to make two points. First, we must not stand by and let President Trump force Ukraine to accept a surrender deal. That is the only fair way to describe what Putin’s, and indeed President Trump’s, terms amount to. Rewarding Russia’s aggression would make a third world war more rather than less likely, setting a terrifying precedent that an illegal invasion can become a permanent, internationally tolerated annexation. We might as well wave farewell to Taiwan and South Korea now; their fate would surely be sealed by such a surrender deal.

Blinking at the prospect of what was called a prickly nuclear power—I think the noble Lord, Lord Skidelsky, said that—would be the best possible advert for nuclear proliferation. The message it would send to a whole host of hostile countries would be: get nuclear weapons, then no one will take you on.

As for the example given by the noble Lord, Lord Farmer, of the precedent of the Cuban missile crisis, anyone who has read Max Hastings’s superb book Abyss, which I can recommend to this House, will know that the true message of history from that episode is that Russians respect strength. They can sniff out weakness, which we should not display. The Cuban missile crisis did not lead to Armageddon because the Russians knew that a nuclear exchange would lead to the total obliteration of their country, even if America would survive in some fragments. We need to project strength, not weakness.

My second point is that the case for giving Ukraine the frozen Russian state assets as reparations for Russia’s illegal invasion is compelling. Now it truly is urgent, and possibly even existential for Ukraine. It is time to move from a process of consideration to make a decision on this matter. There is at least $26 billion of these funds held in this country, and about $300 billion worldwide. Releasing these funds for Ukraine would, in a single stroke, fill the funding gap left by America’s U-turn at Russia’s expense, not our taxpayers’ expense. Surely it is time now to take this step.

In the past, it has been said at the Dispatch Box and by the Minister’s colleagues that this step must be taken in harmony with our allies in the G7. But a member of the G7 and still one of our allies—when I last checked the news—is America and Donald Trump. In winding up, can the Minister say whether the Government’s position is that the US should have a veto on releasing these funds to Ukraine, or will that be done in conjunction with other allies but not with President Trump? We all know what his position on this will be.

Secondly, a step that the UK could take unilaterally is to commit that under no circumstances will the £26 billion of frozen Russian state assets in this country go back to Russia, irrespective of whether and to whom they do go. I would welcome clarification of the Government’s position on this.

In conclusion, I thank the Government and the Minister for all the hard work that I know they are doing.