LONDON – If Ukraine has a champion in the British government – and it could definitely benefit from one at the moment – the title might go to Bob Seely.
A lawmaker from the governing Conservative party, elected member of the cross-party foreign affairs committee and a retired British Army captain, he seems to understand Ukraine and the wider region much better than the typical, Westminster politician.
“People in the United Kingdom – including here in Parliament and in government – don’t seem to have much knowledge about Ukraine,” he said in an interview with the Kyiv Post at the House of Commons.
“But we’re starting to see that change,” he added. “Especially now, because of people’s growing concerns about Russian aggression.”
Seely has become something of an authority on Russia’s usage of hybrid warfare, interference and subversion tactics.
He pays close attention to Ukraine, where he says Russian GRU military intelligence agents were “fire-starters” who “used paramilitary, non-conventional warfare” to kick-start the bloody conflict in the east of the country in 2014 that has killed 10,500 and displaced at least 1.4 million people.
If he had his way, everybody would be as well-informed about the real situation in Ukraine as he is – but not everyone can draw upon Seely’s rich experience.
Prior to being elected to parliament he was a foreign correspondent for the Times newspaper who spent years focused on the Soviet Union and later, the fledgling democracies of post-Soviet central and Eastern Europe. Later, he would be commissioned in the British Army as an officer and would serve tours of duty in Afghanistan and Iraq.
This period of time prior to his political career seems to have helped in shaping his world-view and the direction of his later political and advocacy work. Above all else, it seems to have fostered in him a tough, hawkish stance on the Russian Federation, that he sees as a destructive and subversive aggressor – even if he thinks the Russian people are ultimately decent and victims of their power-hungry leaders.
But Seely’s interest isn’t just professional – he also has a deep, personal connection to Ukraine.
“I actually lived in Ukraine from 2000 until 2004,” the MP recalled. “I still have many friends there and I’ve got a real fondness for the people… Ukraine is clearly going places – but it still needs to clean up its act.”
Ukraine and Russia are currently moving in fundamentally different directions, according to Seely, and the undertone of his words carry a warning about Ukraine’s future if it doesn’t stay committed to its pivot to Europe.
Seely recognizes that Ukraine is in the unique and challenging position of implementing difficult and painful internal changes, while also defending its territory from a powerful enemy. But that shouldn’t stop the government from moving ahead and picking up the pace with the implementation of reforms.
“The country – and especially the governing classes, has to get its act together,” he warned, adding that the British government is committed to helping Ukraine stay on track with its reform process. “The political and judicial reforms, the anti-corruption drive and the reforms to build a transparent and open civic society are incredibly important,” he said, adding that if Ukraine can succeed in establishing a functioning and open civic society, it will be a world-first – an eastern Slavic model for democracy and a beacon for the region.
“Ukraine can either go down the post-Soviet route of oligarchy and a closed society or it can have a free, civic society – unfortunately we see that Russia is going in completely the wrong direction.”
For Ukraine, Seely has high hopes – but positive outcomes are reliant on Ukraine’s politicians acting in the national interest, not their own, and the public becoming more committed to civic duty.
“Powerful Ukrainians need to keep in mind that they’re not there to enrich themselves,” he says.“They’re there to serve the community – that concept of statehood and service is very important.”
Everybody else, he says, should try and become involved in civic activism of one form or another.
“You’ve got to build your state,” he said. “A lot of my friends in Ukraine are very active in civic society and that’s key – when people are disengaged, that’s dangerous.”
His takeaway suggestion for the government of Ukraine is a reassuringly simple one: “Give your people freedom, as much freedom as they can use, and then wait for the country to prosper.”
On security, he backs the U.K. government position carried out in Kyiv by British Ambassador to Ukraine Judith Gough: That there is no secure Europe without a secure Ukraine.
“The Kremlin argument that there are no Russian forces in Ukraine is dead – that argument has been dead for a long time now. Anywhere where people have a free press they know that it’s rubbish,” he said.
Seely has written manifestos and strategies for responding to and combatting Russian aggression – some published in cooperation with the Henry Jackson Society think tank.
He says that Ukraine and the United Kingdom should both steel themselves for an ongoing, “full-spectrum threat” from Russia that will last for years, and that the threat makes the two countries natural allies.
Seely is also acutely aware of the pain and hardship that Russia’s war has caused the people of Ukraine and he has a great deal of respect for the Ukrainian armed forces who have managed, with Western support, to bring Russian regular troops and Kremlin-backed proxies to a tenuous stalemate along the 400 kilometer contact line in eastern Ukraine.
However, he also thinks that Putin’s war has badly backfired for the Russian head of state, who may be now trying to claw his way out of Ukraine without too much loss of face.
“The paramilitary forces and thugs under Kremlin control, this strategy, it hasn’t really worked,” he said. “And I think that Putin now realizes this and knows that he needs to extricate himself from this wretched war that he’s got himself into. We have to remember that they wanted to overthrow local government in a bunch of areas, including Odesa, Mykolaiv, Kharkiv, Donetsk and Luhansk – but they only really succeeded, partially, in two. I think that’s because they didn’t count on the energy and vitality among Ukrainians to fight back.”
Seely doesn’t anticipate that the Russians would escalate their war against Ukraine – despite their unpredictability – in fact, he thinks, the Kremlin is starting a drawn-out and embarrassing withdrawal from the country.
But the British lawmaker also says that Ukraine’s western allies should keep options on the table in case they need to increase their efforts to defend what some experts are calling NATO’s eastern flank.
“We should be doing more, actually,” said Seely, who labeled the United Kingdom’s bilateral material assistance to Ukraine as helpful but insufficient at less than $60 million annually.
“More lethal aid is coming,” he predicted. “I’m in favor of this – I think we’ve been too soft on the Russians, to be honest.”
