Ukraine

Mark Hendrick Excerpts

Tuesday 18th March 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mark Hendrick (Preston) (Lab/Co-op)]

Russia’s military deployment into Ukrainian territory is extremely disturbing and without justification. That invasion is reminiscent of the Soviet occupation of Czechoslovakia. I was just a boy at the time but I can still remember those events in 1968. It took nearly 30 years to get the Soviets out of Czechoslovakia. The only difference in the case of the recent invasion by Russia is that it was done by troops who did not dare to speak their name. We saw troops in what were obviously Russian uniforms, but with no insignia identifying them as Russian. We saw people in masks or covering their faces who did not respond to questions from interviewers.

Russia is a member of the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe. That was hardly about security or co-operation in Europe. It was a unilateral invasion for its own purposes. I am a member of the OSCE parliamentary assembly and regularly meet Russian, Ukrainian and other members from Parliaments across the OSCE area. To me, recent events are a disgrace. What happened beggars belief. There has been mention of South Ossetia, Abkhazia and Georgia. If the conflict is not resolved fairly quickly by economic pressure, engagement and negotiation, it could turn into another of those frozen conflicts that we have seen elsewhere.

Strong and concerted action needs to be taken. I go some way with the former Foreign Secretary, the right hon. and learned Member for Kensington (Sir Malcolm Rifkind), who said the response needs to go much further. The Foreign Secretary indicated today that there may be movement towards a G7 and away from a G8 if the G8 decides on such action.

I have acted as an observer at elections in Russia. I went to observe the last Duma elections in St Petersburg and saw the sorts of things that can happen. We know that the referendum was illegal. It was not sanctioned in Kiev or anywhere other than in Moscow. As an observer at those elections in St Petersburg, I remember watching a parliamentary count, seeing the figures being given out, seeing two Russian police officers escort those ballot boxes into a van, and the van driving off to nowhere. At the count afterwards, the figures that we were given were totally different from those assigned to that polling station when we were there. So we know how Putin and his people can organise elections. We know that there have been elections in Russia when the turnout has been more than 100%. The difference between the figures that were given for the number of people in Crimea who wanted to be part of Russia and the figures that we saw last weekend tells its own story.

Economic sanctions are important, as is energy policy. In the UK and particularly in my county, Lancashire, we are looking at fracking and shale gas as a future option. We also produce all the nuclear rods for the nuclear power stations throughout the country, so Britain can look forward to self-sustainable energy. Other parts of Europe and the European Union are not so fortunate. They will have to wean themselves off Russian gas and oil, because if Russia chooses to defend Russian-speaking people, as it would say, in Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Transnistria, Moldova or any other part of Europe, the omens are very bad indeed. I take the point that was made earlier that unless the present situation is handled properly, it could be a re-run of the 1930s. Firm action now by our Government and Governments in Europe and the United States is essential if this is not to descend into the spectacle that we saw in the 1930s.

--- Later in debate ---

[Chris Bryant]

That was one of the other things I was leaving aside for a moment.

We know how Putin reacts in a crisis. That is what really worries me. He always reacts with extreme force. In Beslan the state used such force to resolve a hostage crisis that 334 of the hostages, including 186 children, were killed. When terrorists from the Chechen republic took over a theatre in Moscow, the state’s intervention ended up killing not only all the terrorists, but 130 of the hostages.

We also know about his territorial ambition. I can do no better than quote the right hon. Member for Rayleigh and Wickford (Mr Francois). During a debate on Georgia in the previous Parliament, he said:

“Whatever one may think of Georgia’s actions on 7 August, Russia used grossly disproportionate force in response, and by subsequently recognising its supported regimes in Abkhazia and South Ossetia, Russia is attempting to redraw the map of Europe by force”.—[Official Report, 20 January 2009; Vol. 486, c. 686.]

That is exactly what we are hearing again today. What more do we need to know?

In Syria, Putin actively prevented an early resolution to the conflict and assisted Assad’s barbarous regime in repressing its people, and all for the strategic advantage that accrues to Russia, as has already been said, from its naval base in Tartus, which is vital for access to the Mediterranean. Now, after trying to bribe, bully and coerce the whole of Ukraine into aligning itself with Russia and against the European Union, he has effectively annexed part of an independent country.

I am afraid that the international response, as the right hon. and learned Member for Kensington (Sir Malcolm Rifkind) said, has thus far been pitiful and spineless. People have even trotted out in this Chamber the argument that most of the people in Crimea are Russian speaking and wanted to join Russia in the first place. Can Members not hear history running through the decades? In 1938 the British apologists for Hitler, combined with those who felt that Germany had been treated badly after the first world war, combined with the British mercantilists who wanted to do more business with Germany, and combined with the British cowards who wanted to avoid war at all costs, argued, using the same argument that has been advanced today, that the vast majority of the people in the Sudetenland were really German and wanted to be part of Germany.

I have no desire for us to be at war, or for there to be a war of any kind. I opposed the proposed military intervention in Syria for the simple reason that I could not see how bombing that country would help. However, we should be ready for any eventuality. I was saddened that when I formally asked the Foreign Secretary on 30 November 2011 whether he would rule out the use of force in tackling Iran’s illegal nuclear ambitions, he refused to do so. Others agreed with him. I was told, including by Members on my side of the House, “Don’t be silly. You simply can’t rule things like that out.” Well, perhaps they were right, but I want to ask now why on earth we ruled out any military intervention, in whatever set of circumstances and at whatever stage, from the very beginning of Putin’s advances into Ukraine. I am not arguing for war; I am simply asking why we do one thing for Iran but say exactly the opposite when dealing with Russia.

I think that the EU has shown little honour in this. The Ukrainian Government have behaved with extraordinary and admirable restraint.

[Mark Hendrick]

My hon. Friend makes a very good point. In the last but one Foreign Office questions, I asked the Foreign Secretary what the fact that NATO has a co-operation agreement with Ukraine means, and he gave the impression that I was asking for war. I was not asking for war; I just wanted to put the military options on the table.

[Chris Bryant]

I completely agree with my hon. Friend. I think he also agrees with the Chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee, who spoke earlier.

There has been little honour in the way that Britain, France and the United States, having signed up to the Budapest memorandum, which guaranteed the territorial integrity of Ukraine, now make lots of great speeches but introduce the measliest level of sanctions and targeted interventions against Russian individuals.

The real problem is that we all know where this might all too easily be leading: to Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Moldova and Belarus. What will we say then? What will we do then? We have done far too little to safeguard European energy supply over the years. We have surrendered our military capacity to intervene. We have let commercial interests alone determine our foreign policy. We have failed to tackle deep Russian corruption within the EU, especially in Cyprus. It is not so much that we have let Russia pick us off country by country but that we in the European Union, country by country, have gone begging to Russia to try to do more business with it and left aside too many other issues.

There are things that we could and should be doing. We should target a much longer list of Russian officials. The Foreign Secretary referred, I think, to Leonid Slutsky. He should not be a member of the Socialist Group in the Council of Europe, and nor, for that matter, should his party. I am delighted that the Conservative party has now taken the action that it has, for which I had been arguing for some time. I cannot see for the life of me why the Government still use their slightly weaselly language about the potential of a Magnitsky list. It has been implemented by the United States of America, the European Union has called for it, and the Council of Europe is calling for it, and we should go down that route.

A Russian friend of mine says that Putin is not yet mad. That may be true, but what will our surrendering and our appeasement do for his sanity?