I fear I start from a rather more depressing position than many Members of this House. I agree with the concluding remarks of the noble Lord, Lord Howell. There is a lot in what he said and I think that there was mishandling by the European Union and NATO of a number of the east European states.
I start from the position of trying to understand the Russian position. I have spent some time not only reading the speeches and comments of President Putin, which are liberally sent to me by the embassy—for which, many thanks—but I have talked to the Russian ambassador, who is a very civilised and thoughtful man. If you look at what President Putin has been saying and doing, you recognise that there is a pattern to that behaviour which is trying to reassert control over areas of which he has lost control.
I can understand that in historical terms. Russia did lose out when the Soviet Union collapsed. More importantly, although Russia has a proud history in terms of what it has achieved scientifically, culturally and in other ways, it had a truly tragic history in the 20th century: two world wars, a revolution that failed disastrously and led to millions of people dying from famine or being uprooted and deported, and of course the gulags and all that followed from that. It is a tragic history and Russians feel it very strongly. They feel equally strongly that Ukraine not only should be under their influence but needs to be because of the “fascist threat”, as they play that card. President Putin plays it but many Russians believe it, and the reason they believe it is not hard to find: a lot of Ukrainians fought for the Nazis and were particularly brutal. The reverse is also true: many Ukrainians fought for the Communists and Stalin and were also very brutal. The whole of Ukraine was brutalised throughout the Second World War period.
We can understand all that, but the basic line on this is that you do not just throw over international agreements that you have signed—and Russia did sign, as the noble Lord pointed out, the 1994 declaration which removed the nuclear weapons from Ukraine in return for a guarantee of its borders from the five permanent members of the Security Council: Britain, France, China, Russia and the United States. That is what Russia has broken, because it feels passionately that Crimea should be part of Russia. Actually, that could have been achieved. It would not be an unreasonable thing to develop.