Hansard

As events in Ukraine unfold, minute by minute, the appalling and occasionally unhinged announcements from Russia’s capricious President mean that we cannot know his endgame. Putin’s comments on Ukraine’s very right to exist, which mirror those of Hitler decades ago in relation to Czechoslovakia, Poland and the former Soviet Union, make one wonder whether it is the extirpation of Ukrainian sovereignty itself.

This is a day of infamy for the people of Ukraine. Putin’s tanks are rolling; bombs rain down from Russian fighter jets; and Putin’s navy is shelling, too, in what is nothing short of a full-scale, illegal military invasion—one that the duplicitous Kremlin regime denied would take place.

At least 40 Ukrainians have already been killed, including a 15-year-old in his own home, and others are dying as we speak. While Putin lies about only targeting military infrastructure, footage from Kharkiv shows otherwise. This is a real war, with Ukrainian civilians at high risk. Even the Chernobyl nuclear plant is under attack.

I know that all our thoughts are with the victims and their families. Heartbreaking as it is to see the smoke billowing on our TV screens, we must watch, we must act, and we must pay tribute to the resilience, resolve and courage of Ukraine and her people.

It is surreal to hear academics and professors such as Maria Avdeeva, the research director of the European Expert Association, which identifies and analyses disinformation, who, sitting in her living room declared with the greatest dignity that she would not leave her hometown. Maria and her friends have trained in territorial defence units, and they will defend their country with everything that they have against this unprovoked attack on their freedom—because they must.

In addition to physical warfare, there have been disconcerting reports of so-called wiper attacks, to which hundreds of bank systems and other organisations in Ukraine are being subjected. Those cyberattacks are designed to completely and irreversibly wipe out Government and financial data, electrical grids and other important infrastructure in order to completely destabilise all of Ukraine.

Putin’s ludicrous declarations of independence—I saw no glorious speeches by putative presidents or ceremonies at supposed events in Luhansk and Donetsk—give the lie to the idea that those areas of Ukraine declared independence at the behest of what commentators mistakenly call separatists. In fact, Russia inspired, led, armed, trained and funded the militias there, not to create new nations but ultimately to annex those regions—integral parts of Ukraine—to Russia itself.

Sadly, the long-enduring Russian people will suffer from the excesses of their despotic President, from economic hardship to the loss of young Russian soldiers who will inevitably die in Ukraine. In the beleaguered, bewildered and terrified communities of Ukraine, that suffering will be greatly magnified. Their military is no match for Russia’s, and Putin had the element of surprise, as he chose when, where and how hard to strike.

A protracted guerrilla war is likely. In the 1940s, after the second world war, anti-Soviet Ukrainian partisans inflicted thousands of casualties on their opponents, who suffered higher fatality rates than in Afghanistan four decades later—a protracted insurgency that only ended after 400,000 Ukrainians were deported to Siberia and a further 200,000 were executed.

After the brutal Nazi occupation, Ukraine fought the Soviets because it had vivid memories of Stalin’s Holodomor, the genocidal terror famine that killed between 4 million and 7 million Ukrainians in the early 1930s, accompanied by the annihilation of Ukraine’s intelligentsia, traditional elite and even almost its entire Communist Party leadership.

Is it any wonder that, on 1 December 1991, in a turnout of 84.2 per cent, 92.3 per cent of Ukrainian voters—28,804,071 voters—voted for independence? It is that overwhelming democratic mandate, including an 84 per cent pro-independence vote in both Donetsk and Luhansk, that former KGB man Putin ignores and despises.

What to do, Presiding Officer? The days of sending in the Scots Guards are firmly behind us. Clearly, strong diplomatic condemnation that is accompanied with direct and severe economic sanctions must be immediately imposed. From a ban on Aeroflot flying to western countries to the freezing of assets—Russian state and oligarchic—and a cessation of Russian imports, every peaceful avenue must be brought to bear to pressurise Putin. If the west does not stand firm, a watching China could consider Taiwan fair game.

Providing humanitarian assistance to Ukraine is essential, and we must be prepared to welcome some of the inevitable tide of Ukrainian refugees who will flee west from the horrors of war. Covid has hit Russia hard with 350,000 official deaths and falling living standards, which has no doubt played a part in Putin’s warped thinking. Despots like foreign adventures to distract their people and shore up support, as bombs fall, people die, children cry and millions are in shock.

Russia must cease its attacks now. Resolute diplomacy, strong sanctions, international law and peace must prevail.