Brendan Howlin (Wexford, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I too welcome to the Chamber the wonderful ambassador of Ukraine to hear this debate. Two years ago, the bloodiest conflict our continent has seen since the Second World War began. There is no end visible to the carnage and wanton destruction. The imperial ambitions of Vladimir Putin which caused him to invade his neighbour, Ukraine, and set out to remove that nation from existence, remains unabated. Well before his unlawful and brutal attack on Ukraine, Putin set out in an hour-long speech his dream of a new Russian empire, one to be achieved through coercion and conquest. His speech sees independent Ukraine reduced to a tributary State where any aspirations to nationhood are to be smothered and destroyed. For Ireland, that strikes deep. We know the impact of an imperial neighbour who would deny independent nationhood and even independent culture.

Putin’s imperial ambitions do not end in Ukraine. He has characterised Russia not as another nation state among equals but rather as cultural and civilisational communities of the Russian world. No nation that was previously incorporated into the old Soviet Union or which existed under previous Soviet control can now be secure. He sees the rebuilding of a Russian superstate as his mission, however bloody and costly the price.

The death of Alexei Navalny gives further proof, if proof was needed, of the viciousness of the Putin regime. Having poisoned Navalny in 2020 in an attempt to remove the leader of the opposition to his dictatorship, he finally had him sent to an Arctic penal colony where, in isolation, he could be permanently silenced. Alexei Navalny was an exceptionally brave man. Few would have the courage to return to Russia knowing he was Putin’s number one enemy, barely recovered from nerve-agent poisoning, aware of what the Russian Government was capable of.

Vladimir Putin wants the world to know he will destroy anyone who stands against him. He wants his opponents at home to cower in fear and for the rest of the world to be anxious of his capacity for terror. The Taoiseach and Tánaiste have said many times that Ireland is militarily neutral but not politically neutral. We are on the side of democracy and freedom. So how does militarily neutral Ireland now act in the face of a real and growing attack on the values essential to this State? The naivety of European policy to Russia over the past decade, when led by Germany and her gas deals and we thought that Russia, through trade, would become just another European state, has been exposed. There is clearly no price that Putin will not require the Russian people to pay for his ambition. The price he is happy to inflict on others has no bounds. In the old cold war scenario, there were understood boundaries, painful and desperate as they were. Putin has no boundaries. He has isolated himself to hear only the echo of his own cronies and we can no longer be certain he will be defeated. All of this is bad enough but we live in a time of great political uncertainty. The potential of the re-election of Donald Trump as President of the United States adds an entirely different dimension of uncertainty. He has already given Putin a free hand to do as he wishes without fear of a Trump’s US reacting. An unstable autocrat with imperial ambitions in charge in Moscow with an unpredictable narcissist in charge in Washington is truly a frightening prospect.

We must stay true to our commitments to Ukraine now more than ever. They are the front line of freedom. Their cause is ours. We must be clear in the EU that the values that underpin our union cannot be picked and chosen. Those who want to exploit the basic democratic structures of the European Union to leverage narrow national advantage at a cost to Ukraine must be faced down. The people of Ukraine are paying a high price for their dream of freedom. We must be willing to pay a price to stand in solidarity with them.

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