Ukraine — House of Commons, 2022-03-15
Topic: International Affairs
Christopher John Bryant (Labour, Centre-left): I agree with every word spoken by the hon. Member for Harwich and North Essex (Sir Bernard Jenkin) All this was not only predictable but predicted repeatedly in this House by some of us, and we were shouted down for saying it. I said in 2014: "We know how Putin reacts in a crisis…We also know about his territorial ambition."—[Official Report, 18 March 2014; Vol. 577, c. 677.] In that debate, hon. Members repeatedly trotted out the Russian line about the annexation of Crimea The Daily Telegraph, from 2007 to 2017, received £40,000 a month for "Russia Beyond the Headlines", which was paid for by the Russian Government—it was Russian propaganda I am delighted that we now have a proper list of sanctions against people such as Nikolai Patrushev, Igor Sechin, Sergei Shoigu and Sergey Naryshkin. They should have been on the list right from the very beginning, as they are the very closest people to the Russian Government and they are completely entwined in the decision to invade Ukraine. But I am mystified at why some people are still missing from the list, including some of the broadcasters. Sergey Brilev regularly reports on the war in Ukraine for Rossiya 1 and always touts the Russian line. He has a £700,000 flat in Chiswick and a British passport, as well as a Russian one. Why on earth is he not on the list? Vladimir Solovyov, a 58-year-old who is also on Rossiya 1, is on the EU list but not on the UK one. Olga Skabeeva, a 37-year-old, is also on the EU list but not on ours. She is another person trotting out the Russian propaganda I do not understand why the former MP Rinat Khayrov, who is very close to the Defence Ministry, is not on the list. I do not understand why his close associate Rustem Magdeev is not, and neither is Khayrov’s daughter, Elsina Khayrova, who is unemployed but manages to have a £22 million mansion in Surrey, a £10 million art fund and £25 million spent on other properties around the UK. I do not understand why her husband, or perhaps soon to be ex-husband, Dmitry Tsvetkov is not on the list, and neither are so many others involved in Gazprom contracts. I do not understand why Abramovich’s properties that are owned through his "subsidiaries", or rather by members of his family—Irina, Anna and Sofia—in Chester Square, Ebury Mews, Eaton Square, Cadogan Place, Hornbury Crescent, Tor Gardens, Fyning Hill and Goldring farm are not on the list. I do not understand why those have not yet been frozen as assets I do not know why Arron Banks is not on the list, either—even Isabel Oakeshott now thinks that he is an agent of influence for the Russian state. I simply point out that Nigel Farage received £548,573 from Russia Today in 2018 alone—this is from the Russian state We should not just be freezing assets; we should be seizing them. I do not think the Government have the power to do that. In normal times, we would not want them to be able to seize assets, but we need to have that power now. If we look at Chelsea football club, we see that it is in a kind of limbo at the moment. It ought to be able to flourish. I have no ill feeling against Chelsea football club—I am Welsh and I do not really care about football much. What I do care about is that the asset should be seized by the Government so that it can be spent on the reconstruction in Ukraine. If the Government do not take that power, they are not going to be able to do that That takes me to a point that I do not think the Foreign Secretary fully understood when she appeared before the Foreign Affairs Committee last week, which relates to the issue of war crimes. We have undoubtedly seen war crimes committed in Ukraine already: the bombing of civilians when they are trying to escape as refugees through ceasefire corridors, the bombing of civilian and residential areas where there are absolutely no military installations, and the use of phosphorus weapons. I would argue that nowadays we should also be considering the use of cluster munitions as a war crime Many of those issues will be addressed by the International Criminal Court, but the one issue that is more difficult for it, because it is not a part of international criminal law at the moment, is the initiating of a war of aggression. In the Nuremberg trials, the British deputy judge declared that it was not just an international war crime but the ultimate international war crime, because it encompassed all the other crimes inside it. The danger is, of course, that the President, the person who makes the final decision—the ultimate decision—the person at the very apex of the decision, is the one most distant from the individual decisions that may be made. I hope that all the people I mentioned earlier as the main elite in the Russian Government, and Lavrov as well, will be held to account at the ICC, but we may have to change the law to make sure that Putin himself is brought to justice, and that is what we must do.