Ukraine

Richard Ottaway Excerpts

Tuesday 18th March 2014 Commons Chamber

[Sir Richard Ottaway (Croydon South) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Preston (Mark Hendrick), a valuable member of the Foreign Affairs Committee.

Russia is not listening to the international community. It was totally alone in the Security Council, with even its closest ally, China, abstaining. I strongly suspect that in a wider vote in the UN, it would have few friends. We should look hard at Russia’s motives. I agree with the shadow Foreign Secretary, the right hon. Member for Paisley and Renfrewshire South (Mr Alexander), when he says that Russia is operating from a position of weakness at present. I believe its primary motive is to protect its naval ports at Sevastapol which, together with Tartus in Syria, is vital to its interests. If Ukraine moves closer to Europe, Russia will not feel comfortable about having a major strategic asset on what it would consider foreign land.

Secondly, I believe that Russia views with growing alarm plans to build gas pipelines across Ukraine. This weakens its dominant position as a major supplier of gas to the European Union. Thirdly, Ukraine, the second most powerful economy in the former Soviet Union, is a linchpin to its plan to build the so-called Eurasian Economic Union, a Moscow-led version of the European Union. The fourth, and the most worrying, is hubris. Anyone watching the way in which President Putin was acclaimed at the Sochi Olympics will realise that he is playing to the national stage.

It is a risky strategy. There is a strong chance that Ukraine will sink into chaos and fragmentation. But there is one chink of light. This is not the 1930s and echoes of Nazi imperialism or the post-war growth of the Soviet Union. Russia is now integrated into the global economy. Its businesses need western financial institutions and access to capital markets. If we are to make President Putin see sense, as my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Kensington (Sir Malcolm Rifkind) pointed out, it is through financial and economic sanctions. The Foreign Secretary knows this, and I salute the way that he has persevered with diplomacy. I have to confess that I distance myself from those who described yesterday’s moves as pathetic. He is right to keep diplomatic channels open and to give the Russians a chance to de-escalate. No one wants a conflict with Russia, and we have to accept that they have very strong hand. As we fight international terrorism, as we seek a resolution in Syria, as we pursue a permanent nuclear deal with Iran, as we withdraw from Afghanistan, we need the lines of communication open, and the Russians know it.

I suspect that round 3 of sanctions is inevitable and necessary, but I think we can also agree that sanctions are a double-edged sword. There are no cost-free sanctions. We have a huge stake in BP’s commitment to the Russian energy giant Rosneft. This is the company in which millions of British pensioners have invested their pensions. At the same time, we have to recognise—

[Sir Gerald Howarth]

My right hon. Friend makes a good point, but does he agree that the UK is perhaps not so badly placed as others, in that only 1.6% of our exports go to Russia, and only 1.7% of our imports come from Russia, and we are dependent on Russian energy for only 1% of our natural gas requirement?

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[Sir Richard Ottaway]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right, and this will entail major strategic rethinking, not so much by Britain, but by the rest of Europe.

We have to recognise that this is a difficult time for Germany, which is hugely dependent on Russia for its energy supplies and exports. Angela Merkel is making the right noises, but her still fragile economic recovery can ill afford the volatility arising from sanction plans, and we must help Germany as much as we can. In a strange way, this may be a moment of truth for Germany. In the post-war years, it has held back on major security and defence issues, but this saga is a wake-up call, not just for Germany but for all of Europe and its strategy. Russia will not hesitate to use its energy assets as a tool of foreign policy. It did it in Georgia, and we see it again in Ukraine today. Europe must now work towards reducing its dependency on Russia for its energy supplies, and building those pipelines passing to the south of Russia should be a priority.

Europe must reverse its downward trend in defence expenditure. Some NATO partners have virtually no defence capacity whatsoever. Crimea may not be of any direct strategic significance to us, but how we deal with this crisis has serious geopolitical implications. So let us speak in a language that Russia understands. We may not go to war over Ukraine, but the Baltic states, which gained independence from the Soviets with the fall of the Berlin wall, are a different case. They are members of the EU, of NATO and of the United Nations. Defence of these allies is our red line, and that needs to be marked out now, in indelible ink, before it is too late.

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[Sir Gerald Howarth]

My hon. Friend raises an important point. I should think that Putin is laughing all the way to the bank. The bank may not be in London, but he will be laughing all the way to a bank. This is the whole point. He might be weak, and we have seen other weak leaders around the world, not least in Argentina, lashing out. I have some sympathy with the view that he is, as it were, lashing out, but the question is whether we continue to let him lash out or have to draw the line.

My right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary referred to the Budapest agreement. We need to understand the significance of ignoring Russia’s flagrant breach of this agreement, to which it, the United Kingdom and the United States of America were signatories. The other European countries were not signatories, but we have a special position and the United States has a special position. This is not a guarantee of Ukraine’s borders, but it is a statement that the Russians

“respect the independence and sovereignty and the existing borders of Ukraine”.

Those borders have been infringed. The question arises of how we can possibly trust Russia if it is prepared so flagrantly to breach an agreement to which it signed up only 20 years ago.

Then the question is: where next? I have a British friend in eastern Ukraine who has been briefing me on what has been going there, and it is perfectly clear that Putin has won the propaganda war. He is telling all his people in Russia that Ukraine is run by a bunch of fascists and it is his duty to go and protect the Russian-speaking people there. The truth is, as my friend found out when he went on to the streets of Donetsk and listened to people’s accents, that these were not pro-Russian Ukrainians but pro-Russian Russians who had been bussed in. He said, “The accents I heard were from St Petersburg, not Donetsk.” Putin has been quite flagrantly provoking the Ukrainians. As my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary said, it is a great tribute to the Ukrainians that they have not risen to that provocation.

[Sir Richard Ottaway]

On the point about playing to the gallery in Russia, is my hon. Friend aware that Putin has gone up by 10% in the opinion polls since this incident started?

[Sir Gerald Howarth]

I am sure he has. Twenty years ago, I worked for the Sukhoi Design Bureau for a year, and Russians made it apparent to me that there is a strong sense of Russian nationalism and they did not want their country to be raped. Putin is clearly playing to that. He is a man who has photographs of himself stripped to the waist, bearing a gun, standing over a shot bear, and so on—a man who plants a Russian flag on the floor of the Arctic ocean. One has to ask oneself, “What sort of a guy is this?”

Let us ask what is next. It is perfectly clear from what my friend in eastern Ukraine is saying that Russia is on a roll. The Russians will move fast, and eastern Ukraine is at risk, because 34% of Ukraine’s economy is in the east. Crimea has no direct land link to Russia; it runs only through Ukraine. So where will the Russians go next? They will annex that land to give them direct access into Crimea. Where might Putin then go? To Odessa. That is why I said to the Defence Secretary yesterday that we need to take more robust action. If he manages to get to Odessa, Ukraine will become landlocked because it will have no access to the Black sea and no port.

These are very serious stakes. I do not know, Mr Speaker, whether you saw the BBC television series, “37 Days”, but it is chilling how the kinds of conversations heard there are being reflected in what we are discussing today. I have no wish to provoke military intervention and no wish to harm the Russian people, but I do believe that the security of Europe is at risk if we do not take action. We need to understand the risks of inaction. Turkey has talked about closing the Bosphorus to Russia because of its treatment of the Muslim Tatars in Crimea. The Russians have been exercising repeatedly on Ukraine’s borders, and it is time for NATO to act and put together some exercises. In my view—I say this to the Foreign Secretary—NATO should have a maritime exercise in the Black sea to serve notice on the Russians, “You do not go near Odessa.”