Meeting of the Parliament (Hybrid) 24 February 2022 [Draft]
It is a great pleasure to follow Willie Coffey in the debate.
There are days on which we wake up to events that will stick with us for the rest of our lives. Given the events of this morning, I fear that today will stay with those of us here in the chamber, everyone around Scotland and everybody around the world.
I welcomed the Prime Minister’s statement this morning that the UK
“cannot and will not just look away”
at Russia’s
“hideous and barbaric”
attack on Ukraine. That will be remembered, because Ukraine is not just a little breakaway republic, and Putin is not a peacekeeper; it was an invasion of a sovereign state. Since the illegal annexation of Crimea in 2014, and through the Russian Government’s on-going support for separatists in the Donbas, Russia has attempted to undermine the Ukrainian Government and to disrupt its path to democracy. Ukrainians want a democratic future, and they should be able to determine their own political destiny.
Last year, at the Crimea Platform summit in Kyiv, the secretary general of the Council of Europe, Marija Buric, said:
“We remain steadfast in our support for Ukraine’s independence, sovereignty and territorial integrity within its internationally recognised borders and we support the full implementation of the Minsk agreements and the Paris summit conclusions that are crucial to ending the military conflict in Donbas”.
Yet today, we find ourselves where we are. We will stand firm behind the people of Ukraine, supporting their sovereignty and condemning Russian aggression. During this dark moment in history, we must all stand strongly against Russian aggression, in solidarity with Ukraine.
Vladimir Putin’s attack on Ukraine was unprovoked. It was an unjustifiable outrage and a heinous violation of international law that will, sadly, have tragic consequences. The Scottish Labour Party stands with our allies and partners in condemning it in the strongest possible terms, and we will maintain and strengthen our unity and our resolve on the matter. That includes a commitment to NATO that is unshakable. It is Russia’s actions that are driving this dangerous escalation of tensions. We believe in the importance of upholding and defending democracy and freedom of choice.
I would like to spend a moment concentrating on the refugees and displaced people who I fear will be a consequence of not just the past 24 hours but the build-up over the past years. There are already estimates that 2.9 million people will be in need, and that number will likely rise fast as more areas are targeted. There is a risk of large-scale displacement of people and flows of refugees out of the country, fleeing the conflict.
We need the Conservative Government at Westminster to urgently provide details on the scale of aid that it will provide to support the Ukrainian people at their time of need. I welcomed the comments this morning, at First Minister’s question time, about the commitment from here in Scotland to support those who come to us.
Russia must grant full and unfettered humanitarian access to the International Committee of the Red Cross, as it is required to under the Geneva conventions, and abide by the laws of armed conflict.
I was contacted by Stefan Kazmyrczuk, as I know that a number of MSPs from East Lothian and across the south of Scotland will have been. His grandfather came to Haddington during world war 2. Stefan wrote:
“Before the eyes of the world, a nuclear superpower has invaded a sovereign, independent, western-aligned nation with a show of chilling military force and a callous disregard of the democratic wishes of the citizens of Ukraine. This has been calculated and predicted by some of the most advanced technologies available to Western democracy but today,”
at this moment,
“we still stand on the cusp of a humanitarian disaster, unseen on our continent since the 1940s.”
The responsibility for that lies at the feet of Putin, but how we deal with it lies at our feet.
16:23