ANY QUOTES USED MUST BE ATTRIBUTED TO MURNAGHAN, SKY NEWS

DERMOT MURNAGHAN: Well a ceasefire agreement is on the table and now the ball is very firmly in Vladimir Putin’s court, that’s a summary of the situation in Ukraine this weekend as the French and German leaders wait for Russia to respond to their peace plan but if Mr Putin doesn’t accept the deal, then what?  Well the Foreign Secretary, Philip Hammond, joins me from Woking in Surrey, and a very good morning to you Foreign Secretary.  First of all we say there the ball is in Russia’s court, what are the bones of the deal that is being proposed to Mr Putin?

PHILIP HAMMOND: Well it is essentially a plan for implementation of the Minsk Agreement, the Agreement that the Russians entered into last November but with an effective updating to reflect the changes that have happened on the ground since then so it’s a practical reiteration of Minsk and a process for implementing Minsk.  

DM: And do you go along with President Hollande who says this is one of the last chances for peace and if it doesn’t work then we’re heading towards war?

PHILIP HAMMOND: Well I think that’s slightly apocalyptic language.  We’ve already got a combat situation on the ground very clearly between Ukrainian forces and Russian backed separatists reinforced by volunteers from the Russian army fighting on the separatist side but this is one of the last opportunities that Russia will have to avoid yet further significant damage to its economy which is bound to happen if the intransigence of Vladimir Putin forces the rest of the world to increase and tighten the sanctions from which Russia’s economy is already reeling.

DM: You mention sanctions there and of course the UK being a key driver in making sure that they really bite, just clear up for us Foreign Secretary why then the UK was not at that meeting in Moscow with President Putin?  Obviously the Germans had to lead it but why no representation at all for the UK?

PHILIP HAMMOND: Well because we’d decided collectively back last summer that the best way to approach this problem was to have a German led, very small group approach to the Kremlin and the format known as the Normandy format which is the German leader plus the French President, he was the host at the time of the original Normandy meeting, would be the channel of communication to the Kremlin and I believe that is the most effective way of dealing with the Kremlin.  Having a sort of committee of ten traipsing in and out trying to talk to the Russians would simply not be effective so we’ve done it this way and I think it is, even now, the most effective way of going about it.  

DM: So how close were you and others from the UK involved in drafting the proposals that were put by Germany and France to Russia?

PHILIP HAMMOND: Well we’ve had meetings with the … I’ve been in Munich this weekend and we’ve had meetings with the French, the Germans, the Americans, indeed I’ve been talking to my Ukrainian counterparts over the last week so it is a collective effort, a collective approach to this.  We’ll be discussing it again in Brussels tomorrow at the European Foreign Affairs Council.  The whole of the European Union, the United States, stands together in this approach to Russia and our support and solidarity with Ukraine.

DM: And is there any divide between those opposing those countries, opposing what President Putin is doing in Ukraine, over the issue – we heard it from President Poroshenko again, saying that they need more practical help, they need more armed materiel, they need more arms and weapons, apparently the Americans are listening to that but Angela Merkel says that’s not going to happen.  Where does the UK stand?

PHILIP HAMMOND: Well the UK is not planning to supply lethal aid to UK, the Germans have made it very clear that they are not intending to do so but this is a national decision for each country to make and the United States has said that it will consider providing arms in certain circumstances to the Ukrainian forces to ensure that they don’t crumble in the face of this onslaught from the Russians but one thing we’re all very clear on and you just played a clip in your bulletin of Secretary of State Kerry saying this, is that there is no military solution to this conflict.  Ukrainians can’t beat the Russian army, that’s not a practical propositions, there has to be a political solution and the Kremlin, Mr Putin, has to understand that he will pay a political and economic price for what he is doing in Ukraine.

DM: But Angela Merkel is crystal clear, she says at this point getting arms to the Ukrainians, there’s a very, very big risk then of further inflaming Russia and that response could be one which we can’t really countenance.  Are you tending towards the United States view or the German view?

PHILIP HAMMOND: Well I think what she’s saying is she doesn’t think that providing additional arms at this stage to the Ukrainians will be helpful in the situation.  The Americans are a little bit more forward leaning …

DM: Do you agree with that?

PHILIP HAMMOND: The Americans are a little bit more forward leaning, Britain’s position is that at the moment we do not think that supplying arms is the right thing to do but obviously if the situation on the ground changes we’ll keep that position under review.  I think to characterise the Americans and the Germans as being on opposite ends of the spectrum is a little bit extreme.  These are nuanced positions, we all understand that we can’t allow the Ukrainian armed forces to collapse, we all understand that there is not a military solution to the conflict but between those two points there’s room for different countries to take slightly nuanced views about how they want to support the Ukrainians.

DM: Well expand the UK’s nuanced view, how would the situation on the ground have to change, as you described there Foreign Secretary, for Britain to reconsider getting arms to Ukraine?

PHILIP HAMMOND: Well I’m not going to get into a hypothetical discussion about circumstances in which we would do X, Y or Z.  At the moment our judgement is that supplying lethal aid would not be the best way to support the situation.  We are focused on diplomacy and we will remain focused on diplomacy and playing a leading role in maintaining the economic sanctions that the European Union has placed on Russia but we obviously review this in the National Security Council on a very regular basis.  We look at the facts, we look at the changing situation on the ground and we consider all the options.  We have an open debate about this on a very regular basis and will continue to do so.

DM: And have you looked at the issue if President Putin turns this offer down?  Is there scope for further and deeper and more punitive sanctions?

PHILIP HAMMOND: There is scope for tightening the sanctions but the most important message we can send in the near term is rolling over the sanctions that are already in place so that he knows that they will remain in place for a further period of time before they come up for review.  These sanctions are having effect and when coupled with the catastrophic impact on the Russian economy of the decline in the oil price, they are putting pressure on the Kremlin and Putin is toughing this out in his public presentation, you would expect him to do that, it’s the kind of person he is but we all know and Russians certainly know, thinking back to the days of the Soviet Union, that in the end the economic facts cannot be ignored.  If your economy is cratering you cannot support the kind of foreign adventures that Putin is undertaking, you cannot support the kind of security state structure that he has generated and that he needs to keep him there so he will have to trim his behaviour to reflect the decline in the Russian economy and sanctions are a critical part of the pressure on him to change his behaviour.

DM: And Foreign Secretary, let’s not forget the people of Crimea, I take it however Moscow and the Kremlin respond to these proposals, the annexation of Crimea will stand?

PHILIP HAMMOND: Well the annexation of Crimea is illegal, we don’t recognise it, we don’t accept it.  These discussions are about the situation in Eastern Ukraine, in the Donbass region, they are not about Crimea, that is a separate issue, we have a separate set of sanctions in place which we’ve already rolled over which are specifically related to the Crimea and there are no negotiations about the Crimea.  Russia’s actions in the Crimea is illegal and the annexation must be reversed.  

DM: Well it makes it difficult for Mr Putin on this one doesn’t it, that even if he was minded to accept it you have just made it very clear then that your next demand is withdrawal from Crimea.

PHILIP HAMMOND: And quite rightly so.  Don’t make it sound as though that’s an outrageous thing for us to demand, this man has sent troops across an international border and occupied another country’s territory, in the 21st century, acting like some mid-20th century tyrant.  We do not behave like that, civilised nations do not behave like that in the 21st century, we live in a rules based society.  We want the Russian people to be part of that international community, we want Russia to enjoy the kind of economic growth and rising standards of living that people in the rest of Europe enjoy and we do not see any reason to tolerate this kind of outrageous and outdated behaviour from the Kremlin.

DM: And Foreign Secretary, what do you draw from this in terms of lessons about EU wide foreign policy?  Isn’t Britain’s influence strengthened here by co-operation with the Germans, the French, the Dutch and many others and if there were to be a UK withdrawal then we genuinely would become an irrelevance?

PHILIP HAMMOND: Well Britain has two mechanisms for its engagement in this sort of situation.  One is the European Union and the other is NATO and NATO of course remains the hard defence shield that protects Europe.  The European Union delivers for example economic sanctions very effectively, it is the chosen route for this kind of response to the kind of aggression we’ve seen from the Kremlin but NATO will remain the cornerstone of our defence policy and it is NATO that provides us with the hard defence that we would need if we ever came under direct threat ourselves.  

DM: Foreign Secretary, many thanks.  Philip Hammond there.