Every day now the news from Ukraine gets worse. Millions of Ukrainians have fled. The death toll of soldiers and civilians is mounting. Ukrainian cities are being reduced to rubble. Putin has shelled a town right near the Polish border and there seems no end in sight.
As President Zelenski spoke to us in the House of Commons last week, you couldn’t help but marvel at the extraordinary resistance that the Ukrainians have shown. When Putin first invaded, many expected that when the Russian tanks rolled over the border Ukraine would fall within hours if not days. It is a true David and Goliath situation yet Ukrainians have shown they are prepared to resist and more than 2 weeks later the Russians have still not been able to take the capital Kiev. Our Government have been right to make it absolutely clear that we deplore the Russian invasion. Ukraine is a sovereign nation and has the right to self-government. And the UK has been right, too, to say that we stand strongly with NATO as the centrepiece of our defence.
As the official opposition we are backing the Government and are showing Putin that the UK is united against this invasion, as is the EU. But as the opposition we have a duty to scrutinise the Government’s response and spell out where they should be doing more.
There are 3 areas where they are falling short.
Firstly, the Government should be tougher on clamping down on the wealthy Russian oligarchs who use London as the centre to launder their billions. This is not money that they’ve earned from hard work or innovation. They’ve got rich by creaming off the national assets that were privatised when the Soviet Union fell. That money should be in the hands of the Russian people not a few super rich oligarchs. And they use this wealth to prop up Putin so we should freeze those assets immediately.
Secondly we should be doing much more to play our part in helping those who are fleeing from Ukraine. Mostly women and children, they don’t want to be leaving their homes but they have no choice. Poland has already taken in more than a million of these refugees but so far our government has let in fewer than 1,000.
And thirdly, the Government should be helping with the impact of the Ukrainian invasion on the cost of living crisis here in the UK. Even before the invasion, families here were struggling with increased costs, particularly with food and energy bills. Russia is a big producer of gas and Ukraine a big producer of food. With supplies interrupted, petrol, energy and food bills are all soaring and the Government must step in to protect those on low incomes who simply can’t find the extra money for these rising bills.
We are lucky to be safe here in the UK. But we can’t turn away from the people who are suffering in Ukraine and ignore the effect that it’s having on people’s living standards here. And we must recognise that Putin’s actions are a threat to all democracies. We must not do anything that will escalate the crisis but we certainly can and should do more to isolate Putin and act in solidarity with Ukraine.