Ukraine Update

Stephen Flynn Excerpts

Wednesday 9th March 2022 Commons Chamber

[Mr Wallace]

There are two parts to that question. Whatever happens, one will be the lessons that we need to learn for our own defences and our own capabilities. It is absolutely the case that one of the other assumptions that President Putin made was that the Russian army was invincible. For all the money that was spent, it did not really matter about the people in that army and it did not matter about battle preparation and all the things that we do to prepare people to go to war. Russia did not do that, and some of those so-called invincible weapons are now being taken apart by handheld weapons, some of which are provided by Britain. That is not something to gloat about. In the end, this is about the loss of human life. None the less, we can be proud that Britain followed up its determination to stand up for its values and its allies by supporting them with hard power as well as soft.

[Stephen Flynn (Aberdeen South) (SNP)]

In terms of the military response, the Secretary of State can and must be wholeheartedly commended. However, I do not necessarily share his enthusiasm for the Government’s humanitarian response. Indeed, I spoke with my constituent Mariya this morning, whose family in Poland cannot even get clarity from the Home Office on whether they should continue with pre-existing visitor visas or go for a family visa. Quite simply, it is a shambles. When the Secretary of State meets the Home Office this afternoon, can I ask him, for want of a better phrase, whether he will stick a rocket right up the Home Office?

[Mr Wallace]

On the immigration pathway, the overall number of 200,000 for family and uncapped for humanitarian is a good thing. The fact that Britain is the biggest single donor to humanitarian aid is a good thing. We should not underplay those two facts. I understand the frustration among both Ukrainians trying to flee and Members of this House about the speed of that processing. I said yesterday that the MOD will support the Home Office as requested; it has agreed in principle and we have work on today to make that go quicker.

Support for Ukraine and Countering Threats from Russia

Stephen Flynn Excerpts

Wednesday 2nd March 2022 Commons Chamber

[Stephen Flynn (Aberdeen South) (SNP)]

Putin’s inhumanity to man makes countless thousands mourn.

Let us be in absolutely no doubt—not that I believe anyone in this House, or anyone across these islands, Europe or the wider west is—that this is Putin’s war. It is his war of choice—a war against Ukraine, a war against its people, a war against its democracy, a war against its freedom, and a war against that most precious thing of all: its hope. But let Putin be in no doubt that we are united. We are unified in our opposition to his barbarity, and that will not change. We will stand in solidarity and in support of President Zelensky and all those who stand at the forefront of the fight for democracy at this moment.

It is some 30 years since the USSR collapsed. When it did, I was but a bairn—a toddler in my mum’s arms. I could not have envisaged that in my lifetime I would turn on the phone with my own wee boy in the room and look at an image that a woman had posted of her child on the bathroom floor in a makeshift bed, because that is where her bairn goes when the air-raid sirens go off. It does so of its own volition. She says that her child has now become an adult. Putin’s inhumanity to man has caused that.

This Government have done much good in recent weeks. The military support that they have provided is to be commended and their humanitarian response is a start, but we can and must urge them to go further. I believe that they will, in time, do just that. On the humanitarian response, we are of course no longer within the European Union, but we are Europeans and we should have a collective sense of purpose when it comes to our response on this most severe of issues, this refugee crisis that is in front of us. We should have a collective unified European response.

On sanctions, the Government can and must go further. The SWIFT mechanism is indeed a remarkable success, but the reality is that there are oligarchs in this very city who have built their reputations on money laundering, who have turned this city into a laundromat and who are taking their time at this moment to shed their wealth before the sanctions come into play. That cannot be allowed to happen. We must not allow that to happen, particularly when these are the very same people who, like Roman Abramovich, say they have no interest in politics. He says he has no links to the Kremlin, but at the same time, his spokesperson tells us that he is trying to broker peace. He cannot be doing both things at the same time. People like him and his colleagues must feel the full brunt of our force, and they must do so now. I have said it once, I have said it twice and I will say it a third time: Putin’s inhumanity to man makes countless thousands mourn.