Russia’s Grand Strategy — House of Commons, 2022-01-06
Topic: International Affairs
Thomas Georg John Tugendhat (Conservative, Centre-right): It is a privilege to be called in this debate. I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Harwich and North Essex (Sir Bernard Jenkin) for having secured it, and indeed to the right hon. Member for Warley (John Spellar), who has elucidated many points that I know many on all sides share. It is only a shame that those who were such strong advocates for Putin’s murderous campaign in Salisbury are not in the Chamber today to defend their hero. However, we will have to address the issues that they would have raised anyway, because what we are dealing with here is not simply a foreign policy challenge—this is not a foreign adventure or a foreign land about which we know little—but, fundamentally, a challenge to the British people, the United Kingdom, our islands, our nations and our communities about how we defend ourselves in a changed world It is Christmas time, and I know many of us have children spoiled by grandparents who will try to force them in front of things such as "The Nutcracker" or "Swan Lake", while we snooze quietly on the sofa pretending to concentrate, and moments like that remind us of the Soviet days. At moments of great difficulty, such as when the Soviet regime was under pressure—when various geriatric leaders were dying quietly in their beds, surrounded by even older members of the Politburo finding another one of their own to replace them—or when the Soviets were worried that coups were coming and change was imminent, Soviet TV played "Swan Lake", "The Nutcracker" and, in fact, anything from Tchaikovsky Christmas will be a reminder for many of us that change is not necessarily that far away, and we are not alone in thinking that. Those sitting today in the Kremlin are aware of it. They know that their position is extremely vulnerable. They know that their claim to have the support of 70%, 80% or 90% of the local electorate is complete rubbish. They know that the reality of their support is very thin. What we are seeing today is not grand strategy in the sense of trying to do what the Soviets tried to do or Stalin tried to do, which was to try to move west as far as the Atlantic or to dominate parts of Africa. This is grand strategy for the Putin regime in the sense of surviving until tomorrow morning, then waking up and surviving until the morning after, and then doing it again and again and again. This is a very fundamentally flawed regime. We are not really talking about Russia here; we are talking about a small cabal of kleptocrats, thieves and liars who have stolen one of the great countries of the world. It is a country, as I have said, that gave us so many artists, musicians, scientists, mathematicians and, indeed, even people who have advanced the life of the British people with inventions such as graphene, which Manchester University has done so well to develop. This is an amazing country. This is a country that really should have a grand strategy, and that grand strategy should be to invest in education, in connections and roads, in health and in the people who have made so much of Europe great, who have brought so many ideas to the world and who have brought so much joy to many hearts—not to mine perhaps but to my five-year-old daughter’s, as she loves the ballet. The problem is that those policies are not being followed, and they are not being followed for the very simple reason that they do not enrich the small band of brigands who sit round the table today. Putin and his 40 thieves sit there, getting richer and richer The latest estimate I have heard, and it is only an estimate, is that Mr Putin controls somewhere north of the equivalent of $200 billion. Of course that is not all in Russia—a lot of it is spread around the world—and very sadly, for those who read the works of Oliver Bullough, Luke Harding, Catherine Belton and many others, too much of it is here. Too much of it has flowed through our systems, our pipes, to be laundered, processed and channelled into areas where it can be redeployed and reused to further the advances of that same group of thieves This is a tragedy, and it is a tragedy for two reasons. One, it leaves the Russian people enslaved to a mob, the victims of a corrupt and despotic regime. Two, it is more tragic because the people we all represent and serve are also victims who are left damaged by this process. Our own financial system is harmed by that corruption, our own property networks are exploited by that corruption, our schools are devalued and our universities are stripped out. None of it is total, but it is certainly true that all our systems are damaged by the level of corruption that we see tolerated by a very small number of people in this country, and that is wrong I was privileged to work with many Members who are in the Chamber today on the 2018 Foreign Affairs Committee report, "Moscow’s Gold", on the spread of dirty Russian money through our organisations. I was privileged to highlight some of the areas where we can do better, and we have been discussing how we might update that report in the coming weeks and months. We know there is a lot to do, so we will be looking more at where this money is going. We will be highlighting, as others have today, the overseas territories. We will be looking, as many others have highlighted, at how energy projects are used to exploit our dependence on petrochemicals and our dependence on energy, and to turn that dependence against us Those are the key reasons why this is about us, but there is a third reason why this is not just about a foreign country or just about Moscow, and why it is not even just about Kiev and Ukraine, although we must stand with the courageous individuals who are today defending their homes against Russian aggression, or rather Putin’s aggression. The third reason is that there is a direct link to our interests here. The reality is that the priorities of our people are, quite rightly, healthcare, education and transport. The interests that we share rely on having a world that works within a system of rules that support and defend free people to exploit their talents and opportunities to grow the economy, to invest for the future, to plan and to reap what they sow. What Putin and his regime are doing is what dictators do all over the world: they shorten the horizon, they cut down investment angles, they make it harder to develop, they make it harder to co-operate and collaborate, and they push people over the border and through illegal migration routes out of fear of persecution at home. Fundamentally, for our people, we must stand up with other NATO countries to defend ourselves against what we are seeing today I come back to my initial point. This is not a grand strategy; this is a cheap trick by a two-bit hustler playing a shi—excuse me, a shyster’s game. I believe that is acceptable. It is a shyster’s game that is being witnessed around the world. It is pretending to be a genuine strategic play, but it is not—it is not. It is a very, very low-grade trick, but because we have not stood up, because we have not been willing to be as firm as we can be, and because we have weakened ourselves with our European NATO partners and partners around the world, we are seeing ourselves undermined by it. We can stand up. We can kick out the dirty money—it is not that much in UK terms. We can, with allies, defend ourselves. We can stand with the Russian people, and with great people around the world, and reject this band of thieves and kleptocrats.