Micheál Martin (Cork South Central, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

It is a very fair point that needs more debate in the Department and in the Dáil. When I was Germany, I had discussions with a think tank and we had no idea of the vulnerability Germans felt when Russia invaded Ukraine. We talk about the existential crisis in the Baltic states and other countries but many Germans felt it was a very significant watershed for them, hence the massive changes made as regards defence capability and the announcement of €100 billion in expenditure. It was explained to me that some in strategic German think tanks are worried that the moment to use this occasion to transform Germany's military capability to protect Europe might now be lost because the Russian attack was repulsed by the Ukrainians. In the first two or three weeks, everybody thought the Russians would be in Kyiv within a week or two. All of the military experts in different countries with big militaries thought the Russians would be in there. I remember President Zelenskyy talking to the European Union and saying it could be his last meeting with it. He was online and said that he was not moving, that he would not leave Kyiv and that he would stay there. To me, that was a key decision. If he had left, perhaps the Russians would be in Kyiv. It is not all about military might. Sometimes it is about putting down the line. That is something we do not appreciate enough.

In the debate in the House itself, some were saying it was not about Russia invading Ukraine at all and that NATO was responsible for the whole thing. It was suggested that the whole thing was a pretext for NATO aggression and imperialism. It is hard to take but that was the kind of debate we were having. Things were suddenly turned around. However, for many European countries, it an existential matter. They feel that if Russia succeeds they will be an awful lot more vulnerable. Many are already subjected to significant hybrid and cybersecurity attacks.

I hope that, at some stage, this war will stop because it is causing great uncertainty and instability across Europe. It is also causing a great deal of dislocation, migration and displacement of human people, which then creates pressure on other countries. That suits Putin, by the way. For many of these authoritarian states, the new agenda is to use migration as leverage to put pressure on democratic states and to cause all sorts of disruption. That is the agenda.