Queen’s Speech

Lord Campbell-Savours Excerpts

Wednesday 18th May 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Campbell-Savours (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, in the 1990s, Edwina Currie and I were invited to Moscow to undertake a series of talks in the Duma on democracy. During that visit, and on a later visits under different auspices, I gained two distinct impressions. First, our embassy staff were convinced that the embassy was bugged, with its staff under surveillance. Secondly, Russians I met seemed convinced to the point of paranoia that American-sponsored nuclear deployments encircling Russia were a constant threat to Russian security. The problem was that both accusations were essentially true.

That belief, set against a background of 26 million losses in the Second World War, stands at the heart of Russia’s paranoia. This is why decent, innocent and patriotic Russian citizens, when additionally subject to propaganda on Ukraine’s Nazification, believe that the West is conspiring to undermine the Russian state. It is that combination—the perceived Nazification of Ukraine, the 26 million losses and the nuclear threat—which underlines and reinforces Putin’s grossly exaggerated case. He has been able to justify his actions and appalling brutality by drawing on the work of Lev Golinkin, a prominent Jewish writer with impeccable credentials, who, in his detailed 19-page report, “Neo-Nazis and the Far Right Are On the March in Ukraine”, available through our Library, details concerns over what he describes as “dark nationalism”. His case is endorsed by Human Rights Watch, Freedom House, the Simon Wiesenthal Center, the US-funded Radio Free Europe, Amnesty International and the World Jewish Congress. His report details the scale of alleged Nazification of Ukrainian institutions, the sponsorship of violence, the role of the Azov Battalion with its roots in extremism, the persecution of Jews, Roma and LGBT groups, the treatment of the liberal media, attitudes to the Holocaust and the banning of the Russian language.

We cannot simply ignore the impact of such reporting on Russian public opinion. It is influencing events and attitudes to military intervention. Our democracies are identified with these reactionary movements and our response is ill-judged. We are set on a very dangerous course. For weeks, I have set out my reservations: the internal pressures that increasingly underly a volatile Russia—over which Putin, in truth, has limited control—invite danger. We need to rethink our current and post- Putin strategy. We do not need a humiliated Russia and a Versailles; there would be no real winners.

I have argued previously in this House the case in detail for a deal to avoid war. Macron, who has been appallingly treated by fellow Europeans, has promoted within the Normandy Format a

“desire to maintain the stability and territorial integrity of Ukraine”—

but outside of NATO. He is being completely undermined as the West runs its proxy war. Equally, the deal proposed by Anatol Lieven of the Washington-based Quincy Institute has been blocked and rubbished. Unsettling the world in a prolonged proxy war can only unleash forces which extend far beyond the borders of a small European state. We need to talk. Lives are being lost in a fruitless conflict which is being used—as has been argued in the media—by some in government to consolidate their leadership. The war is provoking inflation and penalising the poor at home here in the UK. The only silver lining is that brutal Putin’s days are numbered as the truth dawns on the innocent Russian people as to the scale of the brutality taking place in their name.

I believe—as I always have—that there was a deal to be done with Russia prior to this conflict and we failed to pursue it. Ukraine will end up worse off, and that is a real tragedy. The truth will come out in the end.

I congratulate the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Craig of Radley, on the brilliant speech he gave just a few moments ago.