Ukraine

Richard Foord Excerpts

Monday 20th May 2024 Commons Chamber

[Richard Foord (Tiverton and Honiton) (LD)]

It is an honour to follow the chair of the all-party parliamentary group on Ukraine, the hon. Member for Leeds North West (Alex Sobel). It was interesting that the right hon. Member for Gainsborough (Sir Edward Leigh) brought some dissent to the Chamber. The consensus that exists can sometimes stop us thinking freely and thinking of alternatives. It is sometimes helpful to have the sort of devil’s advocate approach that he brought.

To the point that the right hon. Member made about the stalemate, as he observes it, we need to think not entirely about the situation on the ground but about what makes us different and what makes Ukraine different from Russia. What we have seen in Ukraine from Russia is chauvinism, as the term is understood more broadly. There is a tendency in the Russian mind to regard itself as superior, as nationalist and as imperialist. That is why we cannot simply talk about an accommodation at this stage. Diplomacy? Yes, of course, diplomacy must go on as the war goes on—the war is but politics by other means—but Ukraine needs to be negotiating from a position of strength, and certainly from a stronger position than it sees itself in now.

The Deputy Foreign Secretary started his speech by talking about the £3 billion that the Government have announced for Ukraine as annual military aid, and he asked whether other political parties will support it. The answer is yes, absolutely. The Liberal Democrats, as other parties have already set out this afternoon, certainly intend to support £3 billion annually for Ukraine. I hope that support for Ukraine does not serve to be a party political issue in the run-up to a general election. Let us look at things differently, but let us have a consensus as we have up to now. The UK has been pretty exceptional in Europe in having consensus across our political parties; let us hope that continues.

The Liberal Democrats develop our policy at conference. We are very democratic; it is voted on by our members. Last autumn, we hosted Kira Rudik, the leader of Ukraine’s liberal party, Holos. She gave an emotional speech from the platform, which resulted in a standing ovation that was both instinctive and heartfelt. I think that explains why in my party—I know this is also true of other parties—there is a real determination to stand with Ukraine until the end. But it is also necessary to think about endgames, endpoints and how the war might end, so I will address that in my closing remarks.

I would like to talk about how the war in Afghanistan ended for the Soviet Union as well as how this war might end given the amount that Russia is spending on defence at the moment, and, finally, about what role China might play in any conclusion to the war. In 1988, the Soviet Union withdrew its troops from Afghanistan. It did so after 15,000 Soviet soldiers were killed. Many people attribute the withdrawal to the fact that, back home in the Soviet Union, many families were mourning the loss of those soldiers, so there was pressure on the Government in Moscow to withdraw. We will plainly not see that situation here.

In Afghanistan, the motivation was about communist ideology and economic models; for Russia, this is much more a war of religion, of culture and of spiritual questions. The amount of money that the Soviet Union expended on that war was huge. Post 1989, we saw the break-up of the Soviet Union because of the amount of money spent on that war, to keep up with the expenditure of the United States and NATO.

We should give some thought to the popular support for the war in Russia. We know that Russians are following the propaganda pretty closely. An independent polling organisation called the Levada Centre asked the question, “Who initiated the aggression in eastern Ukraine?” Some 48% of Russians thought that it was the United States and NATO; only 20% thought that it was initiated by Kyiv; 14% said that it was difficult to say; and 4% said Russia. I accept that it is a brutal, authoritarian regime where people are scared to give their opinions, but Russians are fed daily on that propaganda about the eastward expansion of NATO after the second world war—it is very much in their minds. We should try to get in their minds. Sun Tzu said centuries ago, “Know your enemy.”

I listened to a fascinating interview on BBC’s “Ukrainecast” on 7 May, with Alexander Goncharov, a former Russian military officer who, when asked why the war started, talked about Ukraine prohibiting the Russian language and bombarding civilians in Kursk, Bryansk, Belgorod and Crimea. That is the mindset of Russians who support the war, and we should pay careful attention to it, particularly when thinking about the restrictions imposed on Ukraine for the use of British weapons and how they might be used over the border into Russia.

Finally, thinking about how the war might end, I want to talk about China. Putin visited Beijing last week. At the outset of the war, I supposed that it might end after the intervention of Chinese diplomacy. Instead, we saw a sham of a peace plan from Beijing in March 2023, although on the positive side it encouraged Russia to stop nuclear sabre-rattling. Unfortunately, China is condemning unilateral sanctions and criticising the expansion of collective defence treaties—a euphemism for NATO. Although I still think that Chinese diplomacy could be helpful to us in bringing the war to an end, it will not be on the terms suggested by Beijing last year.

We have talked a lot today about putting the UK economy on a war footing. We should think more about how we encourage our allies in Europe and beyond— including some of the neutral states that have yet to show skin in this game—that this is a war of liberty against chauvinism.