Ukraine

Lord Houghton of Richmond Excerpts

Friday 31st October 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Houghton of Richmond (CB)]

My Lords, I am grateful for this debate on Ukraine and the opportunity that it presents. Mine will be an uncomfortable but honest contribution. I start by observing that it is difficult to draw any comfort from an analysis of the tactical situation on the ground, and it is even more difficult to derive any moral satisfaction for what we are continuing to ask Ukraine to do.

I say this primarily because the Russia-Ukraine conflict continues to be a limited war—limited by both the means and the geography. These limitations are ones imposed by the United States and by NATO more widely. They almost exclusively constrain Ukrainian activity to Ukrainian soil and deny Ukraine the capabilities required to carry the fight to Russia. They do so, arguably, and understandably, to avoid provoking Russian escalation—hence a preference for financial sanctions as opposed to Tomahawk missiles. But such choices limit Ukraine’s ability to hurt Russia in ways that might bring the war to a conclusion on acceptable terms.

In short, therefore, we continue to accept that Ukraine is fighting a proxy war on behalf of NATO that we are denying it the means to win. Reflecting on this, I worry that we forget that war is not ultimately a battle of physical exchange but a battle of human will. Sadly, the trajectory of this war increasingly looks like one that is hurting Ukraine more than Russia. More specifically, it is hurting Ukrainian society more than Vladimir Putin. Putin appears content to incrementally grind this war towards a ceasefire that will be humiliating to Ukraine and embarrassing to western Governments.

To set alongside and to help balance this gloomy prediction is the potential reality that, even with a ceasefire that rewards Russia, Russia will finish this war in strategic deficit. Finland and Sweden will have joined NATO, the Baltic will have become a NATO lake, NATO’s European members will be en route to spending 5% of GDP on defence and Russia’s war economy may be starting to exhaust it domestically.

However, those who draw comfort from that should remind themselves of the human nature of warfare. So long as Putin remains in power, danger lingers. He recognises the reticence of America to intervene decisively and will observe the relative sluggishness of NATO rearmament. Potentially, Putin will boil at Britain’s boasts regarding its part in inflicting such huge casualties on Russia. He will see Britain as America’s proxy. He will have a fully mobilised set of armed forces, an untouched suite of strategic capabilities, a fully mobilised war economy and a window of opportunity to act while NATO—certainly the UK at the moment—still prioritises welfare benefits over national security.

Even if such a scenario is misjudged, it presents real dilemmas for the Ministry of Defence, particularly those now engaged on the defence investment plan, the exercise that determines how the MoD will spend its money for the remainder of this Parliament. Noble Lords may recall that the Government pledged £10 billion of new investment money to prime the capability priorities of the strategic defence review, but £6 billion of that has to come from defence efficiencies, and the MoD has now discovered an in-year black hole which the service chiefs are now scrambling to fill with in-year savings. The reality of the financial situation is dire, and I suspect that uncomfortable announcements lie ahead.

I can imagine that the main decisions to be taken on defence investment will be the hard choices regarding three separate policy objectives. The first is the combination of spending on Ukraine and re-establishing deterrence through a return to warfighting readiness. The second is in making the nation more resilient to hybrid threats, not just critical national infrastructure but society itself. The third is the investment in the technology needed to give substance to the concept of the integrated force, a force capable of achieving decisive advantage from a position of significantly enhanced lethality. All three policy objectives need huge investment. Without such investment, we potentially fail both Ukraine and NATO, we expose society to hybrid threats, and we completely undermine the only real hope of credibility that the defence review offers our Armed Forces.

Hard investment choices have for ever been the challenge of peacetime planners, but we should not be engaged in peacetime planning. We face an outcome to the current conflict that leaves behind a humiliated Ukraine, a residually dangerous Russia and an impoverished Britain devoid of threat awareness with an unfunded SDR. I have worried for the last 15 years that when it comes to national security the Government of the day have consistently put their perceived duty to reassure society above their duty to respond to geopolitical realities. I hope the Minister can reassure the House otherwise, but I am lost as to what hard facts he can call upon to do so. We need to do more.