War in Ukraine

Rachel Gilmour Excerpts

Thursday 4th December 2025 Commons Chamber

[Rachel Gilmour (Tiverton and Minehead) (LD)]

I was in Ukraine in September with colleagues from the Labour Benches—I was the lone Liberal in a Government delegation. Against what seemed to be mountainous odds, the Ukrainians have defied a superpower that has unleashed a torrent of wanton death and destruction. In war, truth is often the first casualty. Propaganda, misinformation and disinformation swirl, but Ukraine and Ukrainians have truth on their side. Their weapon is truth, and their cause is their very survival.

Some wish to muddy the waters on this matter. As if it was not clear enough who the good guys and the bad guys are, the Russians have been engaged in a campaign of the systematic abduction of Ukraine’s future—its children—who have been swallowed up into re-education camps, where they face psychological torment and indoctrination. It is a process of de-Ukrainianisation, and some estimates say that up to 40,000 children have suffered that fate. This is rancid and wicked; it is an attempt to go beyond the dismantling of a state and to delete the identity of a people.

Britain has a proud history of standing up to tyranny and leading the fight—a glance at any 20th century history book tells us that—but we in the west could have gone harder and faster. Western Governments spent the first weeks and months of the war establishing what weapons systems could be sent; all the while, Ukrainians were being slaughtered in Russian shelling. Weapons systems that were deemed too provocative and escalation-inducing in the spring were flowing to Ukraine by the winter, while thousands perished in bitter fighting. The frontline is a horrifying meat grinder—a graveyard on the very edge of our continent.

It was Churchill who said:

“You cannot reason with a tiger when your head is in its mouth.”

Today, Ukraine is on the frontline not by choice, but by the accident of geography. I do not believe Putin will stop at Ukraine; it is Ukraine today, and it will be somewhere else tomorrow. He has had his sights on Georgia for almost two decades. In 2008, we watched on our television screens the Russian tanks roll through Georgia. Ask the Baltic states, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania; ask the Finns and the Swedes, for that matter, both of whom departed from their long-standing doctrine of neutrality and secured accession into the NATO club. Ask the Poles, who have ramped up their defence spending because they see that their history with Russia is rhyming, and are not prepared to take any chances. This has all come in response to the Kremlin’s war in Ukraine and its perpetual neighbourhood sabre-rattling; anyone comfortable enough to suggest otherwise is either naive or mendacious. Have we not learned the lessons of the last century? Be deeply suspicious of those who characterise Ukraine’s independence as a provocation—some act of NATO encroachment, or poking the Russian bear. There is a very simple reason for ex-eastern bloc countries tilting west: it is because we are free. We are not societies in which those who criticise the regime go missing—where dissent ends in disappearance.

While many hailed Trump’s return to the White House as a potential turning point in this war, believing he held the key to bringing Putin to the negotiating table, any hints of Russian overtures have thus far been vanishingly hollow. During the furore in the Oval Office back in February, which made for very uncomfortable viewing indeed, the noises coming out of the White House were particularly troubling; it truly felt as though the President of the United States was playing to a Kremlin gallery. Branding Ukraine’s elected wartime leader a “dictator” was just one peevish outburst in a maelstrom of absurdity, and as Washington’s stance spins capriciously on a dime, Putin becomes even more emboldened by this weird game of cat and mouse. It was Theodore Roosevelt who said:

“Speak softly and carry a big stick”.

The problem is that although Trump may be speaking softly with Putin, his stick—or other such euphemistic accoutrement—seems to be very much holstered. In 1994, Britain signed the Budapest memorandum, and I remind the Administration in the White House that the United States was also a signatory to that agreement. Among other things, it represented a commitment to respect Ukrainian sovereignty. To rewrite history, or to conveniently forget it, would be to bend to despotism.

Let us not overlook the broader picture, either. Other potential foes are watching and manoeuvring to see if we and our allies across the free world have the resolve, resilience and ability to respond decisively and in a co-ordinated manner. This is a litmus test of sorts—a barometer for future engagements to see whether we will stand by our partners. Do we seriously think that China’s assertiveness around Taiwan or the way it has behaved with Hong Kong has no correlation whatsoever with the war in Ukraine? I, for one, have very serious objections to the proposed Chinese super-embassy, very close to home indeed—a foreign fortress in the heart of our capital that could serve as a base for nefarious activities on British soil, including espionage, sabotage and coercion, not to mention Russian rapprochement with the North Koreans.

The stakes could not be higher. Irredentism is on the march, and the international order established after 1945 hangs in the balance.

[Sir Iain Duncan Smith]

Might the hon. Lady take an intervention?

[Rachel Gilmour]

I am going to finish—sorry. We risk returning to a brutish bygone era in which tyrannical thugs take what they want. Who wants to live in such a world? We all want peace, but appeasement of the Kremlin is not the chess move of a pacifist or an anti-imperialist. It is not anti-war; it is the acceptance of revanchist thuggery over the will of a people to live free from an occupying power. Peace cannot be on the aggressor’s terms, and Ukrainian submission cannot be on the table. After all, peace is not just the absence of war; without justice, there is no peace. Slava Ukraini.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Judith Cummins)]

I call the Liberal Democrat spokesperson.