Ukraine Update

Lord Pickles Excerpts

Wednesday 27th April 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Goldie (Con)]

The noble and gallant Lord has asked an interesting question. There is no question that the broad mechanism of sanctions applied both by individual countries and in concert by united nations is having an impact on Russia. I do not think that there is any question about that. The extent to which that will impact on the Russians’ military endeavour and their capacity to, quite simply, pay salaries or fund equipment or buy new equipment is probably much more difficult to anticipate, but it is a very interesting question. As time passes, we might begin to get a clearer picture of what this means for the Russian military endeavour.

We all understand at the moment that what we are seeing are, quite simply, signs of the failure of that Russian endeavour, because there have been clear indications of failure. Part of that might be down to incompetence and ineptitude on the field, but some of it might be increasingly down to inability to keep supplies coming, logistics flowing and the normal support necessary to sustain armed forces in conflict. It is an interesting point, and I will take it back to the department. If I come across any further information, I shall share it with the noble and gallant Lord.

[Lord Pickles (Con)]

My Lords, it is clear that getting the necessary equipment through to the Ukrainians and dealing with humanitarian help is of the first order. However, I would like to ask my noble friend the Minister a question which is of the second order but is likely to become increasingly important. She will recall that one of the reasons that the totalitarian regimes started to collapse in the late 1980s and early 1990s was because their blood-soaked dictators were unable to keep the truth from their populations. Things have changed in the last few years. There may be censorship in Russia but, with the growth of the digital economy, there simply are not enough secret policemen to monitor the web. Part of the decline of Russia as an economy is that the amount of material out there in Russian has diminished. While the views of what is happening can come through from western sources in English and other European languages, they are not coming through in Russian. Will my noble friend see that the United States and our European allies look at trying to get as much information out there in basic Russian? It is certainly my view that the Russian people are a noble and a great people, and they have a right to know what is the new barbarity being done in their name.

[Baroness Goldie (Con)]

I entirely agree with my noble friend. One of the great frustrations of this whole tragedy has been the stranglehold that President Putin has placed on the dissemination of information in Russia. It is a stranglehold. Outlets have been closed down and criminal law has been invoked to threaten people who share information or appear to be disloyal to the state. My noble friend is correct that trying to reinform the Russian people with the correct version of what is happening is clearly an important and desirable objective. He makes a good point about language. One of the challenges has been not so much the language but just finding a conduit to get the information through. There are some signs that sadly because of these appalling tragedies that have been befalling Russian military personnel, their families now are aware of that. Their families are hurt, sad and in many cases maybe angry and frustrated and not understanding why this has happened and why they have had their own family members sacrificed. There is the possibility that more information will begin to spread through Russia. My noble friend makes an important point and I will certainly bear it in mind.