Geoffrey Clifton-Brown (The Cotswolds) (Con): Does my right hon. Friend agree that one of the excuses for President Putin unleashing his troops in Crimea was that he wanted to protect the Russian minorities? When the Prime Minister next contacts the Ukrainian interim Prime Minister, will he urge him to broadcast and do whatever he can to promote an inclusive message to every citizen of Ukraine that they have nothing to fear from him, either as an interim Government or as an elected Government, and will he also urge the BBC to broadcast that inclusive message?

 

The Prime Minister: My hon. Friend makes a very good point, which is that we should keep saying to the interim Ukrainian Government, and indeed to any new elected Ukrainian Government, that they should respect the rights of minorities and the rights of Russian speakers. We should also uncover how much of the propaganda we have been told about these sorts of things is made up, exaggerated and fabricated. We must not let the Russians get away with a propaganda campaign that says that were it not for the action of Russian troops in Crimea there would somehow have been an appalling bloodbath. I do not think that that is the truth at all, and we should challenge that at every opportunity.

 

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