Ukraine

Lord Shinkwin Excerpts

Friday 31st October 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Shinkwin (Con)]

My Lords, I also congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Barrow, on his insightful and authoritative maiden speech.

As missiles slam into a kindergarten and little children are heard asking their rescuers, “Am I going to die?”, it is almost impossible to fathom the depths of depravity to which the mass murderer Putin has descended. How does anyone regard the development of weapons designed to send huge, radioactive waves smashing into civilian infrastructure as somehow representing progress? Yet that is exactly how Putin described this new development only a few days ago.

Putin is pure evil—rational, sadistic, senseless evil. And he is on the march, painstakingly, incrementally, insidiously, but on the march none the less and, if he has his way, far beyond Ukraine, as the noble Lord, Lord Kerr of Kinlochard, and my noble friend Lady Eaton reminded us. As the noble Lord, Lord Robertson, said, we no longer live in a peacetime era. We know that any rewards for his sadistic aggression in Ukraine will only increase, rather than sate, his appetite. As the noble Baroness, Lady Suttie, implicitly asked: are we alive as a society to the scale of the threat, or are we so desensitised by over three years of horrors unfolding on our TV screens, only a few hours away by plane, that we refuse to see what comes next if Putin is not repulsed now?

I can completely understand why anyone should find it difficult to contemplate the possibility that the savagery being visited on a fellow European democracy could be visited on us. It hardly bears thinking about, and yet we need to. As the noble Baroness, Lady Chapman, said in answer to my question of 25 February:

“The idea that this conflict does not directly affect the people of the United Kingdom is wrong. It is important that we remind people in our country that the conflict in Ukraine and the invasion by Russia are a threat to our security here”.—[Official Report, 25/2/25; col. 1657.]


As the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Houghton of Richmond, pointed out, Putin believes we are prioritising welfare benefits over war-fighting regiments. If reports in today’s media of the terms of the PIP review are accurate, he is correct. My fear, as a primary stakeholder of the welfare state, because of my disability, is that the welfare state will not survive contact with the enemy. Indeed, we may need warfare to protect welfare and so much else that we take for granted.

In conclusion, I simply say to the Minister who is wrapping up the debate that I hope next month’s Budget will reflect today’s consensus in your Lordships’ House: that Ukraine must be given the means to finish the job and put Putin back in his box. The sad truth is that we cannot afford to do otherwise.