Meeting of the Parliament (Hybrid) 24 February 2022 [Draft]
Earlier this afternoon, the leaders of all Scotland’s political parties sent a unified and unambiguous message: Vladimir Putin’s attack on Ukraine is unprovoked and unjustifiable. Our solidarity with the Ukrainian people is unconditional. We must stand ready to support Ukraine as it defends itself against Russian aggression.
Today is a dark today, and it is important that we pause to recognise the scale of what has happened. A hard-won and fragile peace in Europe has been shattered by a despotic Russian regime that has made clear that it will disregard the values that one would expect of the international system in order to advance its imperial ambitions.
There are no excuses for Putin’s actions. What Putin’s regime fears is a democratic Ukraine. He fears a neighbour that makes decisions free from his corrupting influence. The Russian President is attempting to dismember Ukraine, and he must fail.
The international community must be united in its condemnation and its action. We must all stand firm in our support for Ukraine and support the freedom of the Ukrainian people. Our first actions must now be to support them with urgent humanitarian assistance. The cost of war in human lives and in unimaginable and preventable human suffering cannot be wished away. However, we can act to minimise the great evils that are unleashed by the Russian state’s aggression. We can help the destitute, those who flee violence and those whose health—physical and mental—is put at risk by war. Those who flee their homeland to escape the violence that has been unleashed upon them must be able to find sanctuary here. In Scotland and across the United Kingdom, we cannot shy away from our moral responsibility to those who are displaced.
Internationally, the UK must urgently reinforce our NATO allies. The hardest possible sanctions must be imposed against all those who are linked to Putin. Financial sanctions must be swift. Putin’s regime is sustained by its access to a global financial system that allows it to trade its goods and conduct its economic affairs. However, membership of that system is dependent on being a member of the international community of good standing—on being one who observes the rules. That is clearly no longer the case with Russia. Russia must be immediately excluded from financial mechanisms, such as SWIFT—the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication—and we should ban trading in Russian sovereign debt.
Putin’s campaign of disinformation and destabilisation has long sought to undermine our shared public understanding of the world. We know, following the publication in 2020 of the Russia report by the UK Parliament’s Intelligence and Security Committee, that Russia has interfered in elections and referendums across the United Kingdom. Despite that, too many in Scottish and British public life continue to be comfortable turning a blind eye to the Kremlin’s corrosive influence. Shamefully, that list includes a former First Minister of Scotland. The tolerance that has been shown to those operations must end now.
This must be a turning point. We need an end to oligarch impunity. We need to draw a line under Companies House providing easy cover for shell companies and ensure that our money-laundering laws are enforced. We need to crack down on spies. We have to ensure that money is not pouring into UK politics from abroad. We have failed to stop the illicit flow of Russian finance into Britain and the influence of Russian money on our politics and public life. That must end, and it must end now.
There is no doubt that any action will be met with a response from the Russian regime. Vladimir Putin will seek to divide us. He will try to divide allies in Europe from one another. He will try to divide Ukrainians from their neighbours and sow the seeds of ethnic conflict. He will even try to divide us here in the United Kingdom—but we must pull together. Across the world today, the message is clear, and let that message be clear from this Parliament today, too. Peace and democracy will prevail. Vladimir Putin will fail.
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