Contribution
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Sir Jeremy. I start by congratulating the hon. Member for Leeds Central and Headingley (Alex Sobel), who has been tireless in raising the issue of our support for Ukraine. I was delighted to hear from him that the hon. Member for Paisley and Renfrewshire South (Johanna Baxter) has received the Order of Merit; it is richly deserved. I was proud to receive it when I chaired the all-party parliamentary group on Ukraine, and I know that the hon. Member for Leeds Central and Headingley was equally proud. It is a great honour.
The hon. Member began his remarks by saying, rightly, that this is day 1,435 of the full-scale war, but he also rightly pointed out that Russia’s attack on Ukraine began with the annexation of Crimea 12 years earlier. It was arguably even before that, when Russia made it clear that it believed Crimea was Russian territory and its Parliament voted that Sevastopol was a Russian city. The annexation took place in a flagrant breach of the Budapest memorandum, of which we were a signatory along with Russia and the United States. It was a breach of international law. As I have said before, I think the rather feeble response from the west to the annexation contributed to Russia’s belief that it could go further in attacking Donbas.
After the annexation of Crimea, we had the little green men and the separatist movement in Donbas, but we knew—the evidence was overwhelming—that they were not separatists. They were armed, funded and directed by Russia. Indeed, after the horrific shooting down of MH17 on to the territory by separatists, we had intercepts to show they were clearly operating under the command of Russians.
During that time I visited several parts of Ukraine, including those now under occupation. I went to Mariupol, a city on the Black sea. Even then, it was being squeezed by the Russians as a result of the blockade of the Kerch strait to prevent ships from reaching Berdyansk and Mariupol. Since then, Mariupol has been almost completely destroyed, with 75,000 civilians killed in the battle with the Russians. This was an area that Russia claimed wanted to be liberated. It argued that the people were Russian speakers who felt Russian, that their allegiance was to Russia and that they were somehow going to be freed from Nazi oppression in Kyiv. It is the Russian propaganda playbook. It had absolutely no basis in truth, and the fact that so many Russian-speaking citizens in Donbas have been killed in the war proves the cynicism of the Russians.
My right hon. Friend the Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Sir Iain Duncan Smith) talked about the conditions in Donbas. I just had a quick check. This weekend in Donetsk, the temperature will be between minus 11 and minus 18. People can expect to receive water every four days. They are predominantly elderly people, the young people having largely fled, and the conditions there are utterly appalling. What is happening in the occupied territories is horrific, and the hon. Member for Leeds Central and Headingley is absolutely right to raise it.
As well as the ongoing fighting, we know that atrocities are being committed, as mentioned by the hon. Members for Leeds Central and Headingley and for Llanelli (Dame Nia Griffith). We had a meeting yesterday with Dr Jade McGlynn of the war unit in King’s College London, who has done a lot of research about Ukrainians’ plight. We heard that an estimated 15,000 to 20,000 Ukrainians have been detained or have disappeared. We were told that 92% of those who have been released have reported being tortured, ill-treated and systematically abused, with sexual violence used as a deliberate method of humiliation, initially triggering men but then also women.
I want to put two questions to the Minister, one of which relates to those atrocities. On the statute book, we have sanctions available for deliberate abuse of human rights. There is a list of individuals who have been identified as perpetrators of these abuses. Will the Minister look at extending sanctions to the people carrying out these appalling crimes?
My other question relates to a specific location in the Donbas area: Zaporizhzhia, which has one of the biggest nuclear power plants in Europe. It closed down in September 2022, but there are reports that the Russians intend to reactivate its first reactor. The head of the Ukrainian nuclear energy service has said that that risks “nuclear catastrophe”, that the Russians do not know about the safety systems, they do not have the details of the plant, and that to do so is reckless and potentially incredibly dangerous. We are told that it forms part of the discussions taking place between America and Russia but, given Chernobyl—also a Ukrainian nuclear power plant, and we know what happened there—I should be grateful if the Minister would say anything about that specific issue, or at least raise it.