Ukraine

Lord Skidelsky Excerpts

Friday 25th October 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Skidelsky (CB)]

My Lords, I am usually put last on the speakers’ list in any debate on this topic, but I treat that as a badge of honour. I welcome the opportunity we have been given to take note. I have been taking note of the Government’s position on Ukraine for over two years now. It is unchanging: the promise, endlessly repeated, to support Ukraine “up to the hilt”—to do “whatever it takes”. The noble Lord, Lord Coaker, has simply repeated this with his usual eloquence.

What Ukraine thinks it takes is shown by President Zelensky’s latest victory plan: the Russian army must be driven out of Crimea and Donbass. However, who now believes that Ukraine can achieve this kind of victory at the present level of western support? Rather, there is growing agreement that without expanded western support, Ukraine, despite its courage and determination, faces defeat. This was always likely once Russia started to mobilise on a larger scale.

The demographics alone indicate this: you have a country of 36 million fighting one of 147 million. In the last four years, Ukraine’s population has shrunk by 20% while Russia’s has grown. A population the size of London has simply disappeared through war and migration; that is the reality on the ground. Of course, North Korean involvement has added a new front in this debate, but we must not delude ourselves that Russia needs North Korean troops to go on fighting. So the question arises: what more must we do to do what it takes?

There are two basic answers. The first is to tighten economic sanctions, for example by confiscating seized Russian assets. The idea that economic sanctions will cripple Putin’s war machine lingers on in the face of much evidence to the contrary. Since sanctions were imposed, Russia’s economy has boomed, Ukraine’s has slumped and the EU’s has stagnated. I hope that Treasury officials will expand on the lesson given by my noble friend Lord Desai as to why this has happened and persuade their sanctions-addicted colleagues at the Foreign Office to ease up on their enthusiasm for this approach.

I want to repeat the question from the noble Baroness, Lady Smith, which was also referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Balfe. Have the Government taken note of the two-day BRICS summit in Kazan, where Putin hosted a meeting of 36 countries including India and China? It was also attended by UN Secretary-General António Guterres. One wants to ask: in this evolving world order, who is the pariah?

The other notion going around is that we should give Ukraine permission to use long-range missiles and navigation systems, supplied by us and other NATO countries, to strike targets deep in Russia. Do the Government support this? It is crucial, because without that support their strategy collapses. Ukraine needs something else. Are the Government prepared to provide that long-range ability to strike deep into Russian territory?

The victory at any price school relies on two exceedingly dangerous fallacies. The first is that defeating Russia in Ukraine is the key to the security of Europe. For understandable reasons, Ukraine presents itself as Europe’s shield against Russia, and many noble Lords have endorsed this. The argument goes: “If you do not defeat the Russians in Ukraine, they will keep on coming at you. Who next—the Baltics, Georgia, Poland or Moldova? Where will a maniac like Putin stop?” I call this the Munich reflex. It affects the thinking of all British elites because Britain, by its surrender to Hitler at Munich, unleashed him on the rest of Europe. They feel guilty about it and say: “We must not repeat that mistake”. But this is contextually blind. As Owen Matthews pertinently pointed out,

“the supposedly mighty Russian army has been fought to a standstill not by Nato—which, as Zelensky joked … ‘hasn’t turned up yet’—but by Ukraine’s once-tiny military”.

The second conceptual flaw is the discounting of Russian retaliation. That is very dangerous. Putin has already said that Russia would be prepared to use nuclear weapons in response to any massive air and space attack over Russia’s border by a non-nuclear power. Is it the Government’s view that he is bluffing?

Is there a way to bring the fighting to an end? The most hopeful recent development in this deadly game of chicken has been a statement by President Zelensky reported in the Financial Times two days ago:

“Russia putting an end to aerial attacks on Ukrainian energy targets and cargo ships could pave the way for negotiations to end the war”.


At last, there is a breakthrough to realism. Will the Government seize this opportunity to start some serious diplomacy? I mourn those who have died. What now moves me above all else is the thought of the thousands more young men, women and children yet to die if this war is not quickly brought to an end. I beg the Government to play their part in bringing the killing and destruction to a close.

King’s Speech

Lord Skidelsky Excerpts

Thursday 25th July 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Skidelsky (CB)]

My Lords, I welcome the new Front Bench. I know the noble Lord, Lord Coaker, as an eloquent speaker and a doughty defender of the good fight—if he is allowed to.

I believe the Starmer era will be defined by its handling of foreign affairs. As many noble Lords have pointed out, the world is very dangerous place. There are three powder kegs: in the Far East, in the Middle East and in Ukraine. Each is capable of igniting a world war. I concentrate on Ukraine because it is on the outcome of this conflict that our Government can hope to have their biggest influence.

The gracious Speech says—the noble Lord, Lord Moore, also quoted this—that:

“My Government will continue to give its full support to Ukraine and its people and it will endeavour to play a leading role in providing Ukraine with a clear path to NATO membership”.


The new Foreign Secretary spelt it out in even more detail, saying that

“the British government must leave the Kremlin with no doubt that it will support Kyiv for as long as it takes to achieve victory. Once Ukraine has prevailed, the United Kingdom should play a leading role in securing Ukraine’s place in NATO”.

The two propositions in David Lammy’s article are of course linked: victory as defined by Kyiv and NATO means the expulsion of the Russians from Crimea and the Donbass region. Without such a victory, there can be no clear path to NATO membership.

My first question to the Government is this: do they support President Zelensky’s request to use western-supplied missiles against targets deep in Russia? Most noble Lords who have spoken on this believe that the Government should give the necessary permission but, to my mind, giving Ukraine permission to use our missiles for offensive operations deep in Russia comes perilously close to turning a proxy war into an actual war by NATO against the most heavily armed nuclear power in the world. Can we be assured that the Government will weigh properly the risk of such a deadly escalation before giving Ukraine any such permission, and bring those risks to the attention of their NATO allies, some of which are disturbingly trigger happy?

Those such as the noble Lords, Lord Hague and Lord Dannatt, who advocate arming Ukraine to carry the war to Russia, seem unconcerned with the danger of escalation. They never properly face up to the question of what the net gain to Ukraine would be of extending the war in this way. Perhaps the Minister will repair this omission.

I am concerned by the statement of General Sir Roland Walker, Chief of the General Staff, that Britain has three years to prepare for war against the “axis of upheaval”: Russia, China, North Korea and Iran. It is surely not the job of serving officers of the Crown to define British foreign policy, so I urge the Government to tell the general not to be so free with his public words.

My final concern is with economic sanctions. The Bell, which is by far the most reliable source of information on Russia, has tirelessly pointed out that instead of weakening the Russian economy, sanctions against individual Russians have brought about the repatriation of Russian capital into Russia to boost Putin’s war chest. Why do the Government believe that such sanctions will help bring about a Ukrainian victory?

I start from a different position: I do not believe that either side can defeat the other, short of a dangerous escalation. That is why I favour a negotiated peace as soon as possible. This means two things: recognising that Ukraine has already won its most important victory for independence, and recognising that postponement of negotiations will make Ukraine’s position worse and not better. We may supply Ukraine with more and deadlier weapons, but Russia will continue to turn itself into a totally militarised economy, capable of even more deadly retaliation.

I finish up where I started: what is the Government’s road map to peace in Ukraine? I hope the Minister will tell me where I have gone wrong in my argument. If the Government cannot fault it, I beg them to rethink their policy, because we are talking about the life and death of thousands and perhaps millions.