Ukraine

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

Tuesday 18th March 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, I thank, in particular, the Opposition Front Bench for that very constructive and helpful speech. This is a take note debate, and I cannot, and would not wish to, announce the definitive policy of Her Majesty’s Government in response to the Ukraine crisis because it is still under way. As the noble Baroness, Lady Suttie, said, the important question is not where we are but where it ends. As the noble Lord, Lord Soley, wisely said, it would be naive to consider that it will stop here. There is some way to go and we have some influence over where it will end, and the Government are fully engaged in trying to bring to bear the influence that they have.

Yesterday, my right honourable friend and colleague the Foreign Secretary was at a meeting of the Foreign Affairs Council, where a number of decisions were taken. On Thursday and Friday, the Prime Minister will be at the European Council, at which a number of further decisions may be taken, and we will continue from there. We do not yet know how far President Putin will go. So far as we can see, this is very much a matter of what President Putin wants. I am not even sure that it is very valuable at present to talk to the Russian Foreign Minister—I am not sure that he always entirely knows what President Putin wants to do. Whether or not the Russians will continue to complete the annexation of Crimea within the next week is clearly one of the matters that we will have to take into consideration. We will do our best to help and will put pressure to bear so that that does not happen, but it may. Therefore, there is a great deal to play for and we will have to come back to further discussions in both Houses of Parliament and, of course, to continuing discussions with our allies and partners in the European Union and NATO and more widely within the UN. Her Majesty’s Government are extremely hard at work in co-operation with all our allies and friends.

A great deal has been said in this debate about interpretations of history—about Russian motivations, Putin’s motivation and the Russian view of their place in the world and their post-imperial angst. This country is not entirely without its post-imperial angst. The rest of the world does not always pay that much attention to us. We go into great paroxysms over why the Europeans are not nicer to us and why they do not give us what we want when we wish to have a bit of this, a bit of that and not too much of the other, but we sometimes have to accept that the rest of the world does not see the world as we wish to see it. That is also true of Russia today.

The noble Lord, Lord Howell, rightly said that what we have in Russia is a 19th-century approach to a 21st-century world—one in which it thinks that hard power is all that counts, with no truck with the soft power, on which the noble Lord, Lord Howell, is such an expert. There is an expectation of easy access to the open societies of the West without a reciprocal impact on Russian society and the Russian economy. I think it was the noble Baroness, Lady Morgan, who talked about whether Russia had a choice between integration and isolation. My understanding of one of the many themes of Russian history is that modernising efforts in Russia have always been an attempt to take the technical advances from the West without accepting the social and political implications. That was true of Peter the Great, it was true of the 19th century and I think that it is exactly true of where Putin is now. That is part of the problem. They think that they can pick and choose. Incidentally, there are those in this country who think they can pick and choose the quality of our relations with our major partners and are now discovering that they cannot. The Russians may also be discovering that they cannot, but certainly the mindset of Putin and those around him is that Russia can pick and choose and have the advantages of access to the open economy and open society of the West without allowing those influences to contaminate the autocracy of Russia.

Other countries also cherish nationalist memories and myths of their own, which we do not always wish to accommodate. After all, it was the myth that Kosovo was the birthplace of the Serbian nation that persuaded Milosevic and others to cling on to Kosovo in spite of the fact that there were no longer many Serbs living there. There are Muslims across the Middle East who believe that the reconstruction of Islamic caliphate is a vital part in reconstructing their myth of history. I dare say that the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours, does not share that view. Perhaps I may say to the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of St Albans that the Russian Orthodox Church in the high point of the Tsarist Empire collaborated in the idea that Moscow had become the third Rome and, as the third Rome, was entitled to reconquer the second Rome so that Constantinople logically should belong to Russia. That is not something which we accepted and, indeed, part of why we fought the Crimean War was to prevent the Russians from expanding to take over Constantinople.

All those things are a matter of how one views history and, as we all know, there are different ways in which to view it. Crimea is Russian today; it was Tatar yesterday; it has been a matter between many different nations. As I was writing this today from my limited knowledge of Ukraine, I was thinking that, within the lifetime of the majority of Members of this House, the people of Ukraine have been through the most incredible amount of suffering, changing of boundaries and one thing after another. My colleagues in the Foreign Office have always tried to get me to read a number of different books. I have read Timothy Snyder’s Bloodlands, which is entirely about how the lands between Germany and Russia suffered from the 1930s through to the 1940s. Famine in Ukraine was followed by the German invasion and then by the Soviet counterinvasion, which left the Ukrainians deeply divided, confused and mistrustful of each other and of all government.

We are working very hard on how to respond to Russian interventions. We have suspended indefinitely preparations for the G8 meeting in Sochi in June. It would be wrong for the G8 summit to go ahead in the current circumstances. We are considering what other measures to take. Of course, we recognise that we need to continue to talk to the Russian Government and, even more, to Russian society about a whole range of issues. But normal diplomatic relations cannot continue on the privileged basis which Russia felt that it would have.

The noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours, said that a historical mistake is now being corrected—we could spend a lot of time talking about what historical mistakes are—and suggested that there was no evidence of force. The evidence we have is that there are now 30,000 Russian soldiers in Crimea and that the Crimean parliament’s vote on unification with Russia took place with armed troops of Russian origin in the building.

[Lord Campbell-Savours]

Is the figure of 30,000 in excess of what was possible under the agreement that existed prior to this crisis?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

There is considerable evidence that a large number of Russian troops have arrived in Crimea in the past two to three weeks. My clear understanding is that it is not within the agreement. If I am wrong, I will write to the noble Lord. As a matter of interest, a number of troops, including troops from within the North Caucasus, were engaged in—one might put it gently—holding down Chechnya. We recognise that Russia’s rational interests lie in a prosperous and stable Ukraine, as a number of noble Lords have said. We also recognise that international politics is not entirely rational. The First World War would not have broken out if international politics had been entirely rational.

I say to the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, that of course the UK will do everything possible to maintain a constructive dialogue but it has to be a dialogue in which both sides listen and search for agreement on shared principles. We cannot accept that Russia has one set of principles but expects us to observe another. The noble Lord, Lord Chidgey, talked of stand-up arguments with Duma deputies. A lot of us have had that. I seem to remember having such an argument when I was leading a delegation that included the noble Lord, Lord Howell. I rather enjoyed the exchanges.

We have to tell the truth to our Russian partners and recognise that those within the elite demand the rest of the world to accept the special character of the Russian state, which we are not prepared to accept. Russian suggestions that we should move towards a federal and loose Ukraine while maintaining a centralised and authoritarian Russia are a good example of how proposals are being made that would be irrational to accept, but it is attempting to impose them.

It is deeply regretful that the current Russian regime appears to need weak and divided neighbours in order to feel secure. One worry is that a weak Crimea will join an occupied South Ossetia, Abkhazia and Transnistria and others as a means of weakening the states around Russia.

[Lord Lea of Crondall]

I am sure that the Minister is not misrepresenting the Russian position. However, equally, many of us have argued that no matter whether it is federal, devo-max or so on, you cannot go on with a unitary state with the sort of election results of 51% and 49%—and then winner takes all and you have arrested the leader of the Opposition. That is why I mentioned Northern Ireland. There is a caricature going on here.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

There are all sorts of questions in the noble Lord's remarks and I could respond in a number of ways, but at this time of night I hesitate to do that.

The noble Lord, Lord Trefgarne, suggested that we might have a sort of sale and lease back with the Russians. The Ukrainian constitution makes it clear that any alteration of the territory of Ukraine must be resolved by an all-Ukrainian referendum. Article 134 of the constitution sets out that the autonomous Republic of Crimea is an integral constituent part of Ukraine and can only resolve issues related to the authority within the provisions set out by the Ukrainian constitution.

One could have negotiated this. The Government consider the referendum in Crimea to be illegal because it has been rushed through under the presence of a large number of Russian troops without updating the inaccuracy of the electoral register, with OSCE observers being refused entry. It is therefore not in any way acceptable to international standards.

The UN Security Council resolution was clear and strong on all of this. I say to the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, that of course there is a role for the UN Secretary-General and the UN. The Chinese abstention was a silent acknowledgement that some fundamental principles of international law and international sovereignty are at stake in this crisis.

A number of noble Lords suggested that we have to include Russia in all future discussions with Ukraine. Of course we do. We still make every effort we can to maintain a dialogue with Russia. We continue to urge Russia not to take any further action towards annexation of Ukraine. The UK remains supportive of the EU-Ukraine Association Agreement and it is now likely that the political and foreign policy aspects of the association agreement will be signed at the meeting of the European Council this week.

[Lord Campbell-Savours]

The Minister referred to the fact that OSCE monitors have been denied access. I understand that the Russians are claiming that something like 100 international monitors went in. Is that true or are they misleading us? If it is true, do we know where those monitors came from in the world community?

[Lord Hylton]

My Lords, before the Minister replies to that, will he say something about the OSCE in the sense that it may well provide an opportunity for achieving consensus for de-escalating the situation and for the giving up of extreme positions?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, I do not have any information on the question put by the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours. I am aware of Russian reports that observers are there. They are certainly not under any international or umbrella organisation, the Council of Europe or the OSCE. We hope to discover more. The OSCE does have a role to play and a number of OSCE missions of one sort or another are currently either in Ukraine or in prospect, and members of those missions are British. The OSCE is an entirely appropriate framework to work with for this development.

Russia, as noble Lords know, has not always been the most constructive member of the OSCE in recent years. A number of noble Lords suggested that we may have contributed to that, and perhaps have even provoked Russia. Bill Cash MP was indeed interviewed on “Russia Today” last Thursday suggesting that it was really all the EU’s fault. I am not entirely sure that I share that view. Comparisons are also made between Kosovo and Crimea, to which I would simply say that our action in Kosovo was a response to a humanitarian situation in which there was clear evidence of ethnic cleansing and that a large number of people had been killed. It was a slow process in which we recognised that the situation was slipping out of control. None of that has happened in Crimea. The interim Government in Kiev bear no comparison with Belgrade under Milosevic and we took action in Kosovo only after years of diplomatic effort, whereas in Crimea Russia has chosen the military option first and rushed through what appears to be likely annexation.

I turn to the situation within Ukraine. My noble friend Lord Alderdice suggested that Ukraine is split down the middle. To that I would say that it is more confused, fractured, misgoverned and mistrustful. There is some evidence that many Russian speakers in eastern Ukraine are more mistrustful of Russia now than they were even a year or two ago, with some justification. The extent to which we understand what is happening inside Ukraine is something that I suspect we need to be cautious about.

The biggest question is this: can the West’s soft power defeat Russia’s hard power? It did not in 1913-14. The suggestion of the noble Lord, Lord Davies of Stamford—who I regret to see has not remained in his place having intervened earlier—was that Russia would just shrug economic sanctions off. However, a number of noble Lords talked about the long-term costs in terms of shifting away from energy imports. Of course we are talking to other countries, including the Norwegians, about future energy supplies. The costs to Russia in terms of a deterioration in foreign investment and of its other openings are likely to be quite damaging in the long term. The question here is how long is the long term, and what damage under its current regime can Russia do first?

Let me try to cover one or two other points before I finish. I can confirm to the noble Lord, Lord Kerr, that it is not British policy that Ukraine should join NATO. Many of us felt that the attempt by the Bush Administration at the Bucharest summit in 2008 to push NATO enlargement as far as Georgia and Ukraine was a mistake. The Foreign Secretary has said on a number of occasions that we are not asking Ukraine to choose between Russia and the West, but I should also remind noble Lords that the EU’s approach to enlargement was not a great push by the Union. As I discovered when I first started going around eastern Europe in the 1990s, it was a reluctant response to insistent demands from our eastern European partners to gain access to our legal framework, to our economy and to our security provisions. The Estonians and others were particularly strong on that. There is a monument in Tallinn to the British squadron which preserved the independence of Estonia from the Russians in 1919, and the country still remembers that. The Poles, who have a lot of influence in this area, are also conscious that they contributed a great deal to the British effort in the Second World War, something which UKIP has now happily scrubbed out of our historical memory. The largest number of non-British pilots in the Battle of Britain were Polish, so we are not dealing with an area with which we have no historical concern or very little historical connection.

I am conscious of the time. A number of noble Lords spoke about money-laundering. We have sent a group from the National Crime Agency, the Metropolitan Police and the Crown Prosecution Service to help the Ukrainians in their efforts to investigate the stolen funds and we are working with them on that. The noble Earl, Lord Lytton, raised some very specific questions about the Magnitsky case, which it may be appropriate for me to write to him about.

We have to reassure our east European allies. We are working with our friends and colleagues and will continue to do so as well as we can. We are in mid-crisis and do not know how or when this crisis will end, but Her Majesty’s Government will continue to work with our European and NATO partners and, more broadly, within and through the UN. There are fundamental principles of international law and sovereignty at stake, so we will return to this issue in both Houses of Parliament as we proceed. We will of course attempt to maintain a dialogue with the Russians, difficult though that is likely to be, and to pursue a reasoned and reasonable outcome. We will offer all the technical and financial assistance we can to Ukraine, together with our partners. As in so many international crises, there is no easy solution to be found, and we have to bend our efforts to promote an outcome that may be acceptable to all.

Motion agreed.