Ukraine

Lord Craig of Radley Excerpts

Friday 31st October 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Craig of Radley (CB)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Lady, Baroness Pidding. As widely acknowledged, far from crumbling, Ukraine under President Zelensky’s inspiring leadership and with western help has held off all Russia has unleashed over nearly four years of combat. Putin’s 2022 special operation assumed that there would be sufficient support for it throughout Ukraine and that Russian forces would quickly achieve a decisive result; time has shown that this was a complete miscalculation. So, after yet another summer of combat, with heavy losses in equipment and manpower, Russia seems little nearer to achieving its strategic aims. Why?

Despite Russia’s numerical advantage in manpower, technology and operational strength, has it really committed to an all-out effort to win but lacked the right operational tactics? Was its whole strategy just that inept? While some in the West might agree, it is naive to think that the Russians are such a basket case.

Certainly, and rightly, the West considers Russia a real threat to NATO. Although maybe not with quite the same expansionist fervour of the communist regime of the old Soviet Union, but with a mix of attack capabilities and nuclear, Russia would be a formidable foe for NATO.

Let us take a look at NATO through a Kremlin telescope. Far from being the defensive alliance it claims, NATO has advanced further and further east across Europe, having now advanced, with ever-greater capability, right up to the very borders of western Mother Russia. America and Canada could threaten eastern Russia across the north Pacific and from the far north in a large-scale NATO pincer movement. Themselves past masters of deception and falsehood, the Russians must presume on this evidence that NATO’s defensive claim is as false a claim as any that Russia makes.

Oleg Gordievsky, the highly rated KGB colonel run so successfully by MI6, gave us massive high-grade intelligence. We should particularly recall one piece of it. He said that the Kremlin’s then abiding fear was that NATO would attack Russia. Is that perhaps even now its abiding fear? Has Russia not committed itself fully against Ukraine to ensure that its response to any NATO action would be robust and, if need be, even nuclear?

We rightly acknowledge that there are still too many weaknesses in NATO’s defence and deterrent posture, for which more money must be found, but rather than descend into some further arms race abyss, surely the time for diplomacy and peaceful resolution of the existing tensions and warfare has never been greater. Is this achievable with Putin in the Kremlin? The Wagner Group revolt against Putin in 2023 fizzled out and its leader, Prigozhin, was eliminated. Since then, some high-ranking military commanders have been disgraced, accused of failure or corruption. Are they a pool of resentment, even of revolt?

The impact of sanctions, albeit slow, is increasing. Fuel rationing is being introduced. The large numbers of battlefield casualties, to which reference has been made, will become more widely known. All these are strong downsides for Putin, but will he accept a ceasefire or frontier freeze if he does not have under Russian control not only the Ukrainian regions annexed prior to February 2022 but at least all the Donbass and some neighbouring cities as well, and, of course, a guarantee that there is no chance of Ukraine ever joining NATO or the EU? Anything less would look like failure. He would be a goner. To make real progress, must a less intransigent individual or Government first take over? Time will tell.