Ukraine
Debate between Anthony Browne and James Heappey(2 years, 2 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
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James Heappey
We are doing everything we can. We need to dust off an awful lot from the playbook of the ’70s and ’80s. The Chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee, my hon. Friend the Member for Tonbridge and Malling (Tom Tugendhat), has rightly highlighted the important work that the BBC did to promote the voice of freedom during the cold war. We need to give the Ukrainian public hope and to remind them of what they are fighting for—that freedom matters. We take it too much for granted in the west but this is a timely reminder that it is not free. The more we can embolden the Ukrainian public to stand their ground and fight, the better. The more we can help Russians to understand that there is a better way of living than under President Putin, the better.
Anthony Browne (South Cambridgeshire) (Con)
I first visited Ukraine when it was part of the authoritarian communist dictatorship of the Soviet Union and I completely understand why the Ukrainians want to breathe free. I revisited and met civil society groups that were trying to rebuild democracy in Ukraine after it left the Soviet Union. I met the then President Viktor Yushchenko shortly after he was poisoned by Putin for the crime of wanting what we in western Europe take for granted. I am glad Putin’s military progress is going more slowly than he wished, but it is clearly going to be a long and bloody battle. Does my hon. Friend the Minister agree that we should be in this for the long haul and that our support for the Ukrainian people and their quest for democracy should not stop when the fighting stops?
James Heappey
Absolutely. This is no time for gotcha-style comments such as, “You said you’d do this on Monday and you’ve not done it by Wednesday”; this is about making the right decisions to restore Ukrainian sovereignty as quickly as possible while ensuring that President Putin fails and the kleptocracy around him fails. This is behaviour that cannot be tolerated. As the Prime Minister has rightly said, this is behaviour that will be watched with great interest by other authoritarian regimes around the world. It is right that the west pauses and makes good, sound, strategic decisions as the western alliance and does the right thing to draw a line in the sand, saying we still believe in a rules-based international system and liberal, free democracies.