Follow-up to the follow-up

The following passages from the British Parliamentary debates on Ukraine on 7th and 11 January can be read as a kind of appendix to the debate between Critic and myself posted on 10th January. They reveal very clearly the lens through which official Britain sees the world.

In his statement of 7th January, the UK Defence Secretary, John Healey, announced full support for the US interception in the North Atlantic of a stateless, sanctioned vessel engaged in sanctions-busting, linked to Iranian oil exports and Russian revenues.

Turning to Ukraine, the Defence Secretary said that ‘we know that if Putin prevails, he will not stop at Ukraine, and … that a secure Europe depends on a strong sovereign Ukraine’; or as his deputy, Lord Coaker, put it in the House of Lords, ‘Putin has to know he cannot be seen to have won … the front line in Ukraine is our front line as well’.

While the UK was ‘leading th[e] push to peace’, it must be a peace that lasts. The UK and France were organising the deployment of a multinational force to Ukraine after the peace agreement, ‘to carry out defence and deterrence operations in the air, on land and at sea, and to conduct training, planning, recovery and regeneration of Ukrainian forces’. The UK and France would also create military hubs to support that work across the country and build protected facilities within Ukraine for weapons and equipment.

Russia’s stated opposition to such deployment must not determine Western policy. The multinational force should be seen as a deterrent guarantee, not a provocation.

There was an urgent need for a ‘national conversation’ to alert the public not just to renewed ‘state-on-state’ threats, but to ‘hybrid threats, cyber attacks and some of the activity we have seen on our streets, not least in Salisbury a few years ago’ (a reference to the Novichok attack on the Skripals in 2018).

Lady Goldie (leading for the Conservatives) welcomed any actions ‘we can take to weaken Putin’s war machine’. But there were disappointing delays in increasing defence spending. And had the Government faced the possibility that British troops might be killed ‘in direct combat with Russian troops’?

Baroness Smith of Newnham (leading for the Liberal Democrats): if Britain committed troops to Ukraine, ‘are we sure that we would not be creating vulnerabilities for our own troops …?’

Lord Coaker (replying) thanked the two party leaders for their support, as ‘it is extremely important for our adversaries to see that unity of purpose between us all’. ‘If we were to get a peace agreement, a multinational force … with France and Britain in the lead … can provide that security guarantee which makes it a reality’.

Lord Jopling (Conservative): ‘Is the Minister seized of the vital need to ensure that any settlement with Putin over Ukraine does not ignore the possibility of him jumping in and repeating the operation elsewhere … in Georgia and Moldova?’

Lady Stuart of Edgbaston said that if the multinational force is supposed to serve as a deterrent to future Russian aggression, ‘there has to be serious national debate [as to] what would happen if the peace agreement were breached’.

Lord Hannay (Cross-Bencher): ‘Will the Minister tell the House whether the Government have had any indication from any Russian source that Russia would accept either British and French peacekeeping troops or troops to uphold a … ceasefire in Ukraine?’
Lord Coaker replied that ‘I have no knowledge of any commitment by Russia regarding these points’.

Lord Teverson (Liberal Democrat) paid tribute to the ‘armed forces of Ukraine, which are defending our freedom in Europe with lives, blood and treasure’, a sentiment echoed by Lord Coaker.

As always on this matter, I found myself in a minority of one:

Lord Skidelsky (Cross-Bencher): ‘Are the Government insisting on “boots on the ground” in Ukraine as a condition of a ceasefire? As the Russian Government have said that under no conditions will they accept NATO boots on the ground, is that not equivalent to a policy of prolonging the war rather than hastening the arrival of peace? … What other plans or ideas do the Government have for security guarantees for Ukraine?’

To which Lord Coaker replied: ‘The whole point of us saying that we are willing to deploy troops to Ukraine with France and perhaps others is precisely to ensure that any peace agreement arrived at is guaranteed and acceptable to the Ukrainians … Putin needs to negotiate with us. He is the impediment to peace in Ukraine. We say to him: let us negotiate in a way that is acceptable to the Ukrainians’.

Lord Coaker ended in fine style:

‘When [Russia] attacked it was expecting to take Kyiv within a few days, put a puppet Government in place and have a vassal state … Has Russia been successful in doing that? Not at all. I say to Parliament and the country that Russia has totally failed in its original objectives … because of the bravery of the Ukrainian people and the support that most countries have given it’.