One Hundred Year Partnership Agreement between the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and Ukraine

Lord Anderson of Swansea Excerpts

Tuesday 22nd April 2025 Grand Committee

[Lord Anderson of Swansea (Lab)]

My Lords, I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Fox, on his admirable opening and on the way in which he chaired the International Agreements Committee as a great substitute. I was musing that, had that committee not examined this agreement, no other committee in either House would have done so—neither the Foreign Affairs Committee in the other place nor the International Relations and Defence Committee here, both of which have dealt generally with Ukraine although not in this sort of detail.

I shall make one or two rather critical comments on the agreement. Before doing so, it would be appropriate for me to set out my broad position. I yield to no one in criticising the illegal Russian invasion and in admiring both the courage and the national resilience of the people of Ukraine. I fully support the leadership response of the Government and the Prime Minister on both the military and civilian sides; it has broad support in the country. I share the Government’s readiness to stimulate further bilateral co-operation with Ukraine but I question certain elements of the agreement. Be ambitious, yes, but to fix a timescale of 100 years is somewhat absurd, as the noble Lord, Lord Fox, said. Why not 1,000 years, which would be even more absurd? Even a timescale of 10 years would raise questions, given the volatility of the international situation. Each day, when we turn on the news, we get some new utterance from President Trump that may alter substantially the position in Ukraine.

The stated 100 years lacks a sense of history. Think of the way in which borders in central and eastern Europe have changed over the past 100 years or so, albeit with two world wars. Whole regions have changed. Ruthenia, Silesia, Galicia and Sudetenland no longer exist, at least not as they were. People have stayed in their village but changed their nationality. I recently read with interest Professor Philippe Sands’ book, East West Street, which gives some indication of the way in which frontiers have been so indistinct and changed so much over the years. No one can be confident, therefore, as to what the configuration of central and eastern Europe will be in time. I lived in Hungary for two years and imbibed the treachery of Trianon, with the loss of Transylvania at that time; it is very much a theme of the Hungarians.

The Government’s defence is that this is only a symbolic commitment, but the realities are more important: the speed of geopolitical change; the capricious policies of the Trump Administration; the ultimate ceasefire; the nature and composition of any security or reassurance guarantees; and the new borders of Ukraine, as President Zelensky himself has conceded that there will be territorial concessions. What will Ukraine’s relationship with the European Union and, more problematically, with NATO be? The aims of the agreement are worthy but the substance is very sketchy indeed. A road map is not included and there is no mention of priorities in the agreement. If everything is a priority, nothing is a priority.

I say this in general but take an example, such as the inclusion of the Sea of Azov. After the Russian invasion —or takeover—of 2014, there is no serious prospect of Crimea returning to the sovereignty of Ukraine. The Sea of Azov is part of that, in effect, yet it is included in the agreement. Does anyone seriously expect Crimea, including this sea, to return to Ukrainian sovereignty?

NATO membership in Article 2 is aspirational, but there is no serious prospect of it, so far as we can plan, knowing the position of the US Administration. On maritime security, 75% of Ukraine’s navy was lost in 2014. I visited Odessa three years ago and saw the fleet, which was one rusty Soviet-era ship, lots of locally produced small patrol boats and, happily, one junior officer who had spent a period at Dartmouth. That was my impression—it had great morale but was rather irrelevant. Where there have been successes in the Black Sea, they have not been due to the navy itself but to missiles that, for example, have led to the sinking of the “Moskva”, the flagship of the Russian fleet, and to the Russians moving their major ports further east in the Baltic.

There are references to critical minerals. This has been largely overtaken by the soon-to-be agreement between the US and Ukraine. I accept that this is a bilateral treaty. There is no mention of other allies or of our attempting to broker agreements with the EU and helping and encouraging others to join the coalition. The truth is that we should have considered a more limited and realistic agreement based not on lofty aspirations but on practical assistance to Ukraine, which is much needed and welcomed, recognising the mutuality of benefits. Ukraine had done remarkably well in adapting to the local production of drones, for example, and mastering AI. We have much to learn from it on this. The UK could draw on our own successful experience in the 1990s and beyond of the Know-How Fund for countries in the Balkans.

It is no wonder that the committee in paragraph 34 calls for a “review” of the agreement in the event of a peace deal in the reasonably near future. An early revision is therefore likely—much earlier than 100 years.