Ukraine

Lord Browne of Ladyton Excerpts

Tuesday 18th January 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Goldie (Con)]

Yes, I reassure my noble friend that we will do everything we can to support Ukraine. As I said earlier, Ukraine is a friend and an important bilateral defence partner. In terms of the agreements it has reached in its own right, and legitimately so, with the international community and NATO, it has positions which should be respected. Like NATO, the UK will continue to review, assess and monitor, and we shall continue to respond, in conjunction with our allies, in the best way we can.

[Lord Browne of Ladyton (Lab)]

My Lords, I welcome the Statement and particularly that, of its three pages, one is devoted to dialogue, which is the only way in which the dreadful current set of circumstances will be resolved. However, I am disappointed that, despite the fact that the paragraphs on dialogue begin with the sentence

“I must stress that no one wants conflict”,


there is no recognition that there is existing conflict. There is conflict going on in the eastern part of Ukraine and, despite the refreshment of a ceasefire on 22 December, violations of that ceasefire continue. In fact, the OSCE Special Monitoring Mission to Ukraine’s daily report for today says that it recorded, in the last 24 hours, 113 ceasefire violations in the Donetsk region. In the Luhansk region,

“the Mission recorded two ceasefire violations, including one explosion”

and 144 violations in the previous 24 hours. There is existing conflict going on and people are suffering. There are missing persons and all the aspects of violence that we have come to know in many countries across the world recently. My question for the Ministry of Defence, the Minister, the Secretary of State and the Government is: what are we doing to try to lessen or cease that violence for the people who are living with it daily? It is so bad that that amazing mine-clearance organisation, the HALO Trust, has had to suspend its work in the region at the moment.

[Baroness Goldie (Con)]

The noble Lord makes a very important point. He is right that we should remember that a considerable part of Ukraine continues to be illegally occupied, with the negative and unwelcome consequences to which he referred.

The United Kingdom, as the noble Lord will be aware, has supported Ukraine for over 30 years since it became a sovereign state in its own right. Since 2015, through Operation Orbital the UK has done what it can to help build what I described earlier as the resilience of the Ukrainian armed forces. We have provided defensive training to over 22,000 Ukrainian troops since 2015. That includes the maritime training initiative, to which I referred, to help the Ukrainian navy rebuild its capacity.

In June last year we entered into an agreement with Ukraine through a memorandum of implementation, which affirmed the UK as open to supply Ukraine with defensive weapons systems as well as training. That principle remains. The noble Lord will possibly be aware that we signed a UK export finance treaty last November to finance the Ukraine naval capabilities enhancement project. That treaty amounts to £1.7 billion of assistance.

That is meaningful help and it might assist your Lordships to understand that this is not just empty rhetoric. The proposal is that there will be missile sale and integration on new and in-service Ukrainian navy patrol and airborne platforms, including a training and engineering support package. There is a going to be development and joint production of eight fast-missile warships with modern defensive armaments. We will also assist with the creation of a new naval base in the Black Sea as a primary fleet for Ukraine and a new base in the Sea of Azov.

What the UK is trying to do in a holistic manner is to come to Ukraine’s aid in helping it to be more ready to defend itself. I think the UK can be satisfied with, and justly admired for, the help it has been giving. It has not been doing that alone, of course. As the noble Lord will be aware, the United States has been assisting as well.

The United Kingdom is very conscious of the extremely sensitive position in which Ukraine finds itself, not least because of the issues to which the noble Lord referred, but we are doing a number of very substantive things to assist it.