Ukraine

Lord Chidgey Excerpts

Tuesday 18th March 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Chidgey (LD)]

My Lords, I, too, thank my noble friend for setting out the Government’s action so far on the Ukrainian crisis.

Notwithstanding the fraudulent and bogus events surrounding the illegal referendum in Crimea at the weekend, one event stands out as particularly sinister. On the 13 March, the Times carried reports that two prominent Ukrainian community leaders in Crimea were seized by police. When challenged as to their whereabouts, the newly appointed Crimean Minister for Information declared that they never existed. Dmitri Polonsky said:

“There is no Ukrainian community in the Crimea, and so there are no missing community leaders”,

using the logic of Orwell’s thought police, which I am sure noble Lords will remember. As the Times commented, this Orwellian logic allowed Polonsky an answer for everything, from human rights abuses, to prejudice, to the legality of the referendum. According to Polonsky, accounts of Crimean Tatars having their passports confiscated by bogus election commission teams were a distraction. As the Minister of Information said:

“Yes, we know about these events … The actions were carried out by Tartars against themselves, as provocations against the authorities”.

As for the gunfire from pro-Russian militias to block access from Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe—OSCE—observers into Crimea, that was just an,

“expression of disappointment by local people”,

who were irritated by the “interference”. Polonsky had no concerns over the legitimacy of Crimea’s new parliament, or that its leader came from a political party that achieved just 4% in the previous parliamentary elections in Crimea.

The referendum result has, of course, effectively guaranteed Crimea’s secession from Ukraine, despite being conducted in an atmosphere of militarist repression, enforced, as the Minister said, by more than 80,000 Russian troops, some 270 tanks and 140 combat aircraft, and despite being deemed illegal by the OSCE, of which Russia is a member.

President Putin singularly declared that the result of the Crimean referendum was entirely legal and binding and essential to protect the population that is ethnically Russian or had Russian citizenship. He blandly ignored the fact that the UN Security Council, as the Minister mentioned, had decided overwhelmingly that it was not legal—yet another example of Orwellian “misinformation”, particularly if it is to be a precursor to justifying an expansionist annexation policy across eastern Europe and Asia.

Should we be surprised? Certainly my own parliamentary interactions with Russian politicians over the past decade would indicate that no, we should not, for a variety of reasons. Meeting the Russian defence committee in Moscow a few years ago, for example, was anything but diplomatic. Their members, all generals in full uniform, faced us across a long table with open hostility. Mind you, that was shortly after NATO had destroyed the government buildings in Belgrade with precision bombing—although as we subsequently discovered when visiting the city, the Serbs viewed that event far more pragmatically than their Russian supporters.

I recall asking the chairman of the committee—mainly in the hope of deflecting the mounting hostility—where they hoped to see Russia in 10 years’ time. The outpouring of emotion was overwhelming, and best summed up as a universal and fervent wish for Russia to be returned to the great power she had been under communism. Thereby, I believe, lies the rub.

A similar meeting with the foreign relations committee of the Duma, which I think that the noble Lord, Lord Anderson, was leading at that time, proved equally hostile, with no attempt to follow the courtesies of diplomacy. Their chairman began by loudly shouting and berating the UK for not supporting Russia in its dispute with Estonia over plans to move a memorial in the centre of Tallinn which commemorated Russian soldiers who died fighting the Nazis in World War II. According to the Russian chairman, this was the most important issue in foreign policy dividing Russia and the west. It gave me a good insight into how politics was conducted in Russia at that time.

At a meeting in Moscow around 2005 with the Russian state economics committee, I believe it was—I did not quite catch the full title—we were lectured by a senior economist who, from his demeanour, appeared to be a survivor from the communist era of centrally planned economics. He pointed out that our North Sea oil and gas reserves were forecast to be exhausted within the next 40 years. In contrast, Russia’s reserves could supply the west indefinitely, with the implication that this was dependent on maintaining friendly and, presumably, agreeable, relations. This was close to a decade ago. There seemed to be no awareness that in the capitalist, democratic, free world, with full flexibility in supply and demand, market forces determined these outcomes rather than political dogma.

If we take Putin’s justification for annexing Crimea—that is, protection of émigré Russians, either by ethnicity or by citizenship, justifies invasion of other sovereign territory—to its logical conclusion, as the noble Lord, Lord Anderson, has already said, we start to move towards the territory of the annexation of Sudetenland in the 1930s. On this basis, we will find a number of smaller countries, previously part of the Soviet empire, at risk—not just in the Balkans but in Central Asia, where the Ukrainian crisis has put a number of leaders in a quandary. For example, while nervous over Moscow’s military show of power in Crimea, they are also anxious to downplay that end in the toppling of corrupt leaders of independent states under Russia’s influence. Leaders in Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan are now more aware of the risks entailed in hosting military facilities that belong to Russia. The largest military land base outside Russia, the 201st Motorised Rifle Division, is in Tajikistan, while Kazakhstan shares a common border of nearly 7,000 kilometres with Russia and has the second largest ethnic Russian population after Ukraine at nearly 25%.

The Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania also present risks of tension between native populations and Russian migrants. Stalin’s brutal policies of the transportation of tens of thousands from the Baltic states to Siberia, leading to mass deaths through starvation and cold and replacement with Russian workers, servicemen and their families, is a well documented part of history. In consequence, in Estonia, 38% of Tallinn’s population is ethnically Russian and 56% speak Russian as their mother tongue. In the north-eastern cities of Estonia, as many as 82% of the population are ethnically Russian. This legacy of Russianisation spreads throughout the old Soviet empire.

There is no credible evidence of threats against Russian citizens, or of an armed attack, or even a planned attack against Russian military assets. Western leaders have repeatedly called for Russia to abide by the terms of the 1994 Budapest memorandum, where Russia, the United Kingdom and America reaffirmed their obligation to,

“refrain from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of Ukraine, and that none of their weapons will ever be used against Ukraine except in self-defence or otherwise in accordance with the Charter of the UN”.

Clearly, such treaties mean little in Putin’s thinking. If the aggressive approach of the Russian Duma’s parliamentary committees in meetings with counterparts is any guide, it seems that positive action is the only sensible response to the invasion of Crimea.

Without delay, our Government should follow the recommendations set out in the letter of 21 February from Transparency International UK to the Chancellor to prevent the transfer of suspicious financial transactions to the UK from Ukraine, placing money laundering officers on alert, and taking proactive action to prevent money laundering from Ukraine. Following the Chancellor’s positive response to that letter and that request from TIUK, the Government should provide regular reports to this House, setting out actions taken and the results achieved.

Ukraine has already lost the equivalent of almost half its GDP to outflows into offshore accounts over the past three years. Some of these funds have been laundered through the UK, or through UK-linked jurisdictions, with the help of UK bankers, accountants and lawyers. These assets must be identified and returned without delay. The Government must take preventive measures to stop this happening again.

Russian participation in the G8 should be cancelled, its OSCE membership should be reviewed and trade negotiations suspended. Russian membership of European institutions, such as the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe should be revoked and visas and passes issued to Russian participants withdrawn.

In the medium term, the European Union should consider alternatives to the South Stream pipeline supplying Ukraine. The EU should consult with the Norwegian Government, western companies and liquid natural gas suppliers in the region to move forward with creating strategic gas reserves for Ukraine and east and central European countries. The EU should focus initial assistance to Ukraine on clearing its gas debt to Gazprom to reduce its leverage. The EU’s competition case against Gazprom should be accelerated.

The EU and the UK should begin discussions with the USA on changes to the latter’s domestic law to enable oil, gas, LNG, and shale gas and oil to be freely exported. The UK should review its energy policy as a matter of priority to exploit the opportunities offered by the reserves of shale gas and oil, and should be guided by science, not just opinion.

Finally, we should also be aware that the reaction within Russia is far from totally supportive of Putin. The opposition party, Yabloko, states that the position and actions of the powers that be in Russia in respect of Ukraine are a reckless political adventure and that it is unacceptable even to contemplate using Russian troops in Ukraine, while separation of Crimea from Ukraine and its annexation is an error at the highest level. It is calling for the immediate convening of an international conference on political, legal and military issues related to Ukraine and, in particular, the Crimean issues. The prime aims of the conference should be to restore the underlying legal framework in international relations and security, guarantee the integrity and maintain the viability of the Ukrainian state within the parliamentary framework and restore the rule of law in Crimea, observing the interests of Crimea’s population as a whole, with all its component groups, free from repression by political opponents.