March 6th 2025: House of Lords Speech on Ukraine “Breaches of the Geneva Convention have been routine.We heard of more than 2,000 attacks on clinics and hospitals in Ukraine: horrendous war crimes. Over 100,000 files for prosecution have been opened, all pointing to the “mother crime”—the crime of aggression.
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My Lords, this excellent Select Committee report offers an urgent and timely analysis, rightly stating:
“The UK must commit to spending more on defence, spending it better, and leveraging its alliances by design”.
It also cites a different alliance: the deadly quartet of Russia, North Korea, Iran and China—a country on which we foolishly make ourselves ever more dependent, and a quartermaster that, if it wished, could end this war tomorrow.
The report also points to Putin’s deepening connections to key global South countries, referred to by other noble Lords. I too question the wisdom of savaging our programmes in the global South, thus creating a dangerous void into which China and Russia will continue to march.
Defence and development are not binary options and there is an alternative, wiser, moral way of funding both. A hypothecated penny-in-the pound increase in income tax, to be used for defence only, would raise £6.6 billion in the next financial year—more than the £5.8 billion that will be raised by a 0.2 point cut to the ODA budget.
How many of the $300 billion of Russian state assets frozen by the UK and our G7 partners have been repurposed to pay for the defence of Ukraine? There is even a risk of the £25 billion in the central bank of Russia, frozen by the UK and managed by Euroclear—referred to earlier—being returned to Russia.
What are we doing about that?
Why are we still waiting for the release of £2.5 billion from the sale of Chelsea Football Club to help victims in Ukraine? The Government have given no clear reason why these desperately needed funds have not been made available.
Earlier this week I attended a meeting here in Parliament addressed by a Ukrainian MP and Ukrainian prisoners of war, some of whom had been captured after the appalling destruction of Mariupol.
They detailed horrific examples of torture and degradation of prisoners, which included rape, electric shocks, beatings and conflict-related sexual violence. We heard about tank cells with as many as 30 prisoners kept in confined captivity.
Breaches of the Geneva Convention have been routine.
We heard of more than 2,000 attacks on clinics and hospitals in Ukraine: horrendous war crimes. Over 100,000 files for prosecution have been opened, all pointing to the “mother crime”—the crime of aggression.
Perhaps the Minister can tell us when the special tribunal needed to bring the perpetrators to justice will be established.
What are the remaining roadblocks?
Noble Lords should note, too, that the International Criminal Court has issued arrest warrants for Putin and Lvova-Belova for the deportation of Ukrainian children. What do we know of the fate of the 19,000 missing children?
The forcible transfer of children to another group is defined in Article II(e) of the 1948 convention on the crime of genocide as one of the grounds for defining genocide.
What work are government lawyers doing to prosecute this violation of the genocide convention?
In a world increasingly contemptuous of the work of the International Criminal Court, the rule of law and human rights, this is more important than ever. The UK led the way in 1945 and must do so again in 2025.
With likeminded nations we must create a great web—a network of accountability from which, however long it takes, there will be no escape route.
To that end, the Government should use the new Crime and Policing Bill to introduce the principle of universal jurisdiction. They should expand the scope of Sections 51 and 58 of the International Criminal Court Act 2001 and consider other measures.
I hope the Government will work with the Joint Committee on Human Rights in carefully examining the opportunities presented by this Bill to strengthen justice and accountability.
Ultimately, the cost of deterring war is a fraction of the cost of fighting one. Page 58 of the Select Committee’s report states that deterrence is key to preventing atrocities such as those committed by Russia in Ukraine.
Along with hardheaded military deterrence including, for instance, ramping up production of British-Danish Gravehawk air-to-air missiles, we should not underestimate the deterrent effect that the strengthening of international law and our judicial institutions can play in challenging and deterring dictators.
To that end, is it not about time that we joined those countries and international institutions that have designated Russia as a terrorist state or a state sponsor of terrorism? Why have we failed to do the same?
Last week’s appalling defenestration of a courageous war leader may have made what Mr Trump called “good television” but that shocking, discreditable charade would have been unimaginable in the White House of a Roosevelt or a Reagan.
It would have been unthinkable to break alliances, insult allies and line up with a Russian regime led by a war criminal.
To justify this by suggesting that aligning with Russia will somehow counter China—described as a reverse Kissinger—is delusional.
Beijing’s cheers will have been even louder than Moscow’s as it gleefully watched the abandonment of a sovereign state, the dismantlement of the world order, division in Europe and the rupturing of transatlantic alliances.
An emboldened Xi Jinping, Putin’s puppet master, will take it as a signal that he can do to Taiwan what Putin has done to Ukraine, and do so with impunity and without consequences.
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