Ukraine

Lord Kerr of Kinlochard Excerpts

Friday 31st October 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Kerr of Kinlochard (CB)]

My Lords, I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Coaker, on how he introduced the debate, which was brilliant. I congratulate the Front Benches on their unanimity of support for Ukraine.

I warmly welcome the noble Lord, Lord Barrow, who speaks with great authority. His experience of Moscow is much more recent than mine. I was there when Brezhnev’s Moscow invaded Prague and put down Dubček—but perhaps not much has changed. I am very diffident about predicting what will happen in this war, because so much has changed since my time—in particular, America has changed. US policy now seems to be extremely difficult to predict, so the problem my successors face is much bigger than the one I had. We are not sure now about our side, we are not sure where NATO’s core country stands and we cannot be sure that that stance will not change overnight.

By contrast, predicting what Putin does is all too easy—he has told us. All along, he has been completely consistent. In his 2021 essay, “On the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians”, he explains very clearly, going way back into Tsarist history, why he believes that Ukraine has absolutely no right to an independent existence as a country. His Foreign Minister, Lavrov, when asked who advised Putin, said, “Peter the Great, Catherine the Great, and Ivan the Terrible”. It seems that, for once, Lavrov may not have been lying.

As the noble Baroness, Lady Ashton, explained, if Kyiv were to fall, that would not be the end: there would be consequences for parts of Georgia, effectively all of Belarus, and Transnistria in Moldova. If there were a ceasefire, it would be fragile, at least for as long as Putin rules Russia, because he does not accept Ukraine’s right to exist.

Probably 80,000 to 100,000 Russians have been killed in the Ukraine war in this calendar year. Attack is much costlier in lives than defence—five or six to one is the ratio—particularly as drones now transform the battlefield. There are not that many people on these front lines—we are not talking about something like the Somme—but those who are there do not stay long. A Russian blog recently claimed that life expectancy on the front line is 12 days, 11 of which are spent in training—Russian humour can be very bland. Will heavy casualties stop Putin? I do not think so. Will the huge economic damage to Russia stop him? I do not think so.

How long can Kyiv, with its smaller population, sustain a war of attrition? I do not know—but its people’s courage, determination and technological innovation are remarkable. Clearly, we must ensure that they do not lose, because, as has been said from all sides of this House, their war is our war, their defence is our defence and their survival is in our national interest.

Of course we want a ceasefire—what is going on is horrific—but our Government are right to say that the West will have to be ready to provide security guarantees. Given the fate of the Budapest memorandum—the Russians tore it up when they invaded Crimea in 2014, and we shamefully looked the other way—security guarantees would have to be made enforceable by the deployment of forces in Ukraine. Given the position and unprecedented unpredictability of the United States, the bulk of the armed forces would have to be European.

Therefore, I support what our Government are trying to do and accept the concept of the coalition of the willing, which was explained today by the noble Lord, Lord Coaker. My one criticism of the Government’s position is that the need for our involvement has not yet been sufficiently spelled out to the British people. The defence White Paper rightly called for rearmament, but sometimes it made it sound like a useful job creation scheme that was more about national economic growth than national defence and survival.

I believe that we are in a 1938 situation. If the Donbass goes, Putin will be back for the rest. The noble Baroness, Lady Suttie, was right to point to the fragility of the Baltic states and the conclusions those countries have drawn from their fragility, and to mention the concept of all-society defence. Finland has a population the same size of that of Scotland, but in a crisis, Finland can put 1 million men under arms and, as a result, it will not be attacked—it is secure.

I hope that, one day, relations with Russia can be rebuilt. The evil done by the state machine is not the fault of the people. However, while Putin or any like-minded successor is in power, we must help Kyiv hold him at bay and we must explain to the British people why that really matters. Looking back on last year’s election, it is a pity that defence and the question of Ukraine rarely featured. The unanimity of this House in support of Ukraine is excellent, but rather than just agreeing with each other in here, we need to be out there persuading the country that what we say is true.