Ukraine

Lord Tugendhat Excerpts

Friday 25th October 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Tugendhat (Con)]

My Lords, I begin by welcoming the noble Lord, Lord Spellar, to this House and congratulating him on his maiden speech. I had the pleasure of getting to know him some years ago, when we were both on a delegation to Washington, and look forward to hearing more from him in the months and years ahead.

I turn to the war in Ukraine. It is impossible at present to say that either side, Russia or Ukraine, has been the victor. Russia has clearly gained far more territory but that is a far cry from its original aim of taking over the whole country in a matter of weeks. By comparing what it set out to do with what it actually has done, it is fair to say that Ukraine has had the better of the battle. Russia’s army has been shown up as incompetent and its navy has lost control of the Black Sea. Russia has become the junior partner in its alliance with China and, as the presence of North Korean troops demonstrates, it is having to turn to countries which it would once have regarded as satellites to help it keep its army in the field. All in all, Ukraine has done remarkably well.

We are now at a tipping point. Both sides face increasing difficulty maintaining the supply of troops they need. We have seen that in the case of Russia, but there are also newspaper reports about the problems the Ukrainians are having getting people to join the army. It is rather like the press gangs that operated at the time of Nelson’s navy, going round trying to pick up people in the streets and make them join the navy.

Ukraine suffers from the additional disadvantage that its infrastructure is being steadily degraded to the detriment of its military capability, its economic power and, above all, its social cohesion. The question for Ukraine, which comes through very clearly in newspaper reports from that country and from what one sees on the television, is no longer how much territory it can regain but how much it can hold on to. In these circumstances, it is for the Ukrainians to decide what they should try to do. It is not for us to tell them when they should make peace or the terms on which they should do so; it is for the Ukrainians to make those decisions for themselves.

There are, however, three things that Ukraine’s allies, including ourselves, should do. One is to keep up the flow of arms while they continue to fight, and to consider what other arms might be necessary in order to secure the battlefield advantage. Secondly, it is at the same time very important indeed that we should make clear the limits of what we are prepared to do, so that the Ukrainians’ decisions are not based on any false assumptions about the help they might receive. That might well be difficult to do. Thirdly, we must pledge generous help once the fighting stops, in order to rebuild their economy and defence capability. They must know that we, their western allies, will stand behind them in peace and in war and seek to safeguard their security.

In my view, however, this does not mean joining NATO. We think of NATO as a defensive alliance, but we must understand that the Russian people—I emphasise, the Russian people—regard it as a hostile military pact aimed at them. They have been confirmed in that view by the alliance’s expansion eastwards ever since the unification of Germany. One does not have to entirely accept the argument that the Russians were misled on this point at the time of unification and promised that NATO would not expand; but one has to understand that, to the Russians, something that ended at the German border has now been expanded to their border and appears, to them, to be hostile. That provides Putin constantly with the arguments he needs to justify his aggression to the Russian people and to persuade them to support his war, and so it would for his successors. In any case, talk of joining NATO is counterproductive, since clearly, a number of NATO members would veto any suggestion of Ukrainian membership. Therefore, talk of NATO makes it harder to reach a settlement in Ukraine and is disruptive to the alliance.