Ukraine-Russia Relations Debate
Full Debate: Read Full DebateDepartment: Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office
John Grogan
Main Page: John Grogan (Labour - Keighley)Department Debates - View all John Grogan's debates with the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office
Ukraine-Russia Relations
John Grogan Excerpts(5 years, 5 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
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Alistair Burt
My hon. Friend’s intervention makes clear what the House wants to see. The House is not in conflict with the people of Russia, but as the deputy permanent representative made clear yesterday, actions taken by Russia make it difficult, if not impossible, to have the sort of relationships that are necessary and that my hon. Friend is looking for. The UK is open to that and urges Russia to respond to international concerns and to set out to our mutual advantage a new relationship with other states based clearly on a rules-based international system.
John Grogan (Keighley) (Lab)
As well as the exhibition in the House, does the Minister agree that it is resonant that last weekend there were many commemorations of the holodomor across the UK, including in St Anne’s cathedral in Leeds, and that one lesson is that just as fearless independent journalism was needed in the 1930s from people such as Gareth Jones and Malcolm Muggeridge to expose the holodomor, so it is now needed to expose the fake news coming from the Kremlin?
Alistair Burt
As I mentioned earlier, we are supporting the provision of money for journalism that is based on the truth and counters disinformation, but the hon. Gentleman’s remarks about the importance of investigative journalism are clear. We support the actions of correspondents who go to the most difficult areas of conflict at great personal risk, and we support campaigns designed to make sure that journalists are not targets.