Hansard

When we came together for an emergency debate a year ago tomorrow, a 40-mile-long convoy of Russian troops had crossed the Belarusian border and was headed for Kyiv. As we spoke in the debate, Hostomel airport, just outside the city, was under attack by Russian airborne troops. It was abundantly clear to all of us that the Ukrainian capital and Government could fall in a matter of days.

We watched the footage and saw the photos of the residents of Kyiv—civilians—preparing to fight a desperate last stand with homemade Molotov cocktails against one of the largest militaries on earth. Eighteen-year-old high school students were being handed rifles and given hasty instructions on how to defend the neighbourhoods that they had grown up in. President Zelenskyy was being offered evacuation by the Americans, with the prospect of setting up a Government in exile. His answer was that he needed ammunition, not a ride.

The weeks that followed were horrific, but Kyiv did not fall, that massive Russian convoy collapsed and retreated, and it became clear that Putin’s fantasies of a swift victory would not be realised. As the Russians withdrew, the horrors that they had inflicted on Ukrainian civilians became clear.

The mayor of Hostomel, Yuri Prylypko, was murdered by Russian soldiers while delivering food and medicine to residents. His body was then booby-trapped, almost killing the priest who came to bury him.

In Bucha, north of Kyiv, in Izyum, in the east, and in other towns across liberated areas, torture chambers and mass graves have been discovered. In still-occupied Skadovsk, a local nurse, Tetiana Mudrenko, was executed by hanging in the town square by collaborators. Her crime was telling the Russian occupiers that Skadovsk was, and would remain, part of Ukraine.

The past year has been horrific for the people of Ukraine. They have endured trauma that we can scarcely imagine, but they have not given in. The Kremlin’s plan was for Ukrainian independence to end in 2022 after a three-day invasion. That plan failed. It failed at Hostomel airport, where 300 Ukrainian national guardsmen routed Putin’s elite airborne troops. It failed in Kherson, from where we saw the amazing footage, last November, of Ukrainian soldiers being greeted by cheering, crying crowds as they re-entered the city. And it failed in Mariupol, a city almost completely destroyed and still under Russian occupation today but whose defenders fought one of the most effective defensive operations in modern urban warfare. Without any chance of winning that battle, Ukrainian soldiers and police officers fought on for nearly three months, making their final stand at the Azovstal steel plant. That effort held up Russian divisions many times their size and undoubtedly saved other towns and cities across the south from a similar fate.

The Ukrainian defenders at Mariupol included the Azov Battalion, which I mentioned in my contribution this time last year. The Azov Battalion was founded by neo-Nazis and, although it is a very different organisation years after having been integrated into the Ukrainian army, there is still a fascist presence. It is uncomfortable to see soldiers of a nation whose struggle we absolutely support giving interviews with western media while wearing fascist iconography such as the black sun. I am glad that NATO removed its promotional photo of a Ukrainian soldier whose uniform prominently featured that icon.

That is not remotely close to being the most important issue in this war, and raising it should not be seen for a second as a lack of support for Ukraine’s struggle. As somebody who is on the Kremlin’s sanctions list, I hope that no one would accuse me of that. However, as a key supporter of Ukraine, the UK has a responsibility to speak some truth to our ally, especially when Russia is pushing the utterly disingenuous nonsense of neo-Nazi influence as justification for its wicked invasion. I hope that no one here would tolerate British soldiers wearing such iconography, so we should help those whom we are arming to similarly make it clear that it is unacceptable for their own troops.

Nonsense claims about the influence of the Azov Battalion are being used by Putin’s useful idiots here and elsewhere to undermine public support for Ukraine. Given how long this war is sadly likely to last, we cannot give an inch to those who are seeking to undermine our solidarity. Those same useful idiots often disingenuously claim that some kind of compromise needs to be reached, pretending that their only interest is in a peaceful end to the war. What would such a compromise look like? Compromise implies giving Russia something that it did not have a year ago—something that it could walk away with. Ukrainians have, rightly, made it clear that they will not cede an inch of their territory to an invading power. What right do outside players have to tell Ukrainian citizens that the price of peace is their continuing to live under an occupying force that tortures and massacres them and that hangs civilian protesters in town squares? Peace is the absence of violence and the presence of justice. Ukrainians will have neither of those things while they live under Russian occupation.

Beyond supplying the equipment needed by Ukraine’s armed forces—which Scottish Greens support—European nations must step up our sanctions efforts and dramatically speed up our transition away from fossil fuels, thereby robbing Putin of the geopolitical weapon that he has wielded for 20 years. The UK might have sourced only a small fraction of its gas from Russia before this war, but companies here have played a key role in supporting Russia’s oil and gas sector. I hope that other members were as horrified as I was by the revelation that Scottish-based Baker Hughes continued to ship equipment to Russia as late as June 2022—months after the war began. I welcome the Deputy First Minister’s robust response to my request that the Scottish Government withhold grant support from a company that was still contributing, however indirectly, to the Russian war machine.

The people of Scotland should be proud of the solidarity that has been shown to our Ukrainian friends. We have welcomed a number of Ukrainian refugees that is far in excess of what our share of the UK population would indicate. Huge sums of money and tonnes of supplies have been collected here. The Scottish Government is straining its limited powers in that area to make the sanctions and economic pressure on Russia as effective as possible.

It is easy for us to take freedom for granted, because there has been no serious threat to our own, here, for decades. However, 30 years after the end of the cold war and the start of what was then claimed by some to be the irreversible forward march of democracy, we can see on our own continent how fragile freedom really is. However peripheral our role is, history will judge all of us on what we did to defend freedom in Ukraine. This afternoon, we will unanimously declare—once again—that Scotland’s role is to stand in solidarity with the Ukrainian people and to do all that is within our power to aid their victory. Slava Ukraini!