Ukraine

Mark Francois Excerpts

Tuesday 10th September 2024 Commons Chamber

[John Healey]

My hon. Friend reminds the House of a very important point. Numbers are one thing—we can say that the UK has led the Operation Interflex nations to train 45,000 Ukrainian troops—but more importantly the expertise of British and other allied soldiers has helped to provide the Ukrainian soldiers who are stepping forward to help defend their country with combat medical skills, battlefield training and survival techniques. I had the privilege to join the then Leader of the Opposition on Salisbury plain to witness some of the training and, later, to talk to Ukrainian troops who had finished their training at Brize Norton as they were poised to fly back to Ukraine. They were men very much like any in this House—lorry drivers, accountants and public relations executives—who are now, alongside their civilian colleagues, fighting for the future of their country and the right to decide, as a sovereign nation, its future in the world. I pay tribute to their bravery and to the skill of our armed forces in helping to train them for that task.

[Mr Mark Francois (Rayleigh and Wickford) (Con)]

We have had a quote from Suvorov, and Napoleon famously said that

“the moral is to the physical as three is to one.”

After two and a half years of a barbaric Russian invasion, we cannot expect the Ukrainians to keep resisting with one hand tied behind their back. That means that, while the Russians attack power stations with long-range missiles at will with winter coming, and while they use glide bombs, which are brutally effective as tactical weapons on the frontline, we have to allow the Ukrainians full freedom of action to retaliate, not just as a military necessity, but to maintain their own morale. They must be bolstered to keep going. We could help them, and it is about time that we did that one thing.

[John Healey]

The right hon. Gentleman makes his very strong points in his customary way. This is about not retaliation, but self-defence, and he is quite right to say that the impact of the “moral” often outweighs the impact of the physical. When I updated the House on the physical—the 900 sq km of the Kursk region that is now in Ukrainian hands—the “moral”, or morale, impact on Ukrainian troops and Ukrainian citizens has been huge, so just as it is putting pressure on Putin, it is also lifting the spirits of Ukraine after nearly 1,000 days of a bloody battle against Putin’s invasion.