Ukraine Update

Lord McDonald of Salford Excerpts

Wednesday 27th April 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Goldie (Con)]

I am indebted to the noble Lord for a perceptive contribution. He is quite right that that has emerged as an issue in the area; indeed, it was referred to in the other place. My right honourable friend the Secretary of State, Ben Wallace, said that we were looking at it to see what we could do to help. I will take those comments back to my department and will see whether we can produce something more positive.

[Lord McDonald of Salford (CB)]

My Lords, we have seen the shortcomings of diplomatic efforts focused on the person of President Putin. We can hope that after his re-election, President Macron will recalibrate. However, contacts with the Russian authorities are important through conflict, so could the Minister please tell your Lordships’ House what the main channel is now for contact between Her Majesty’s Government and Moscow?

[Baroness Goldie (Con)]

In respect of diplomatic channels, that question is probably better responded to by my noble friend Lord Ahmad. However, it is very difficult to sustain normal diplomatic relations with a country where such appalling things have been happening, at the instigation of that country. There has to be a proper acknowledgement by the UK and other countries that may feel similarly minded that we are appalled by what President Putin is doing, and it is therefore very difficult to maintain a diplomatic relationship. What I would say is that the Russian embassy remains open in London and the UK embassy remains open in Moscow. On a defence level, we endeavour to maintain some kind of dialogue with the Ministry of Defence in Russia because that is for the purposes of risk and escalation management and trying to support broader HMG efforts to ensure an internationally accepted negotiated settlement of the Ukraine conflict. We will continue to make efforts to maintain these communication channels but that is a two-way process, and I have to make it clear that the parameters of that discourse are obviously pretty narrow; they are defence related.