My hon. Friend raises an important point. I should think that Putin is laughing all the way to the bank. The bank may not be in London, but he will be laughing all the way to a bank. This is the whole point. He might be weak, and we have seen other weak leaders around the world, not least in Argentina, lashing out. I have some sympathy with the view that he is, as it were, lashing out, but the question is whether we continue to let him lash out or have to draw the line.
My right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary referred to the Budapest agreement. We need to understand the significance of ignoring Russia’s flagrant breach of this agreement, to which it, the United Kingdom and the United States of America were signatories. The other European countries were not signatories, but we have a special position and the United States has a special position. This is not a guarantee of Ukraine’s borders, but it is a statement that the Russians
“respect the independence and sovereignty and the existing borders of Ukraine”.
Those borders have been infringed. The question arises of how we can possibly trust Russia if it is prepared so flagrantly to breach an agreement to which it signed up only 20 years ago.
Then the question is: where next? I have a British friend in eastern Ukraine who has been briefing me on what has been going there, and it is perfectly clear that Putin has won the propaganda war. He is telling all his people in Russia that Ukraine is run by a bunch of fascists and it is his duty to go and protect the Russian-speaking people there. The truth is, as my friend found out when he went on to the streets of Donetsk and listened to people’s accents, that these were not pro-Russian Ukrainians but pro-Russian Russians who had been bussed in. He said, “The accents I heard were from St Petersburg, not Donetsk.” Putin has been quite flagrantly provoking the Ukrainians. As my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary said, it is a great tribute to the Ukrainians that they have not risen to that provocation.