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DERMOT MURNAGHAN: Now Britain’s military capability has been cut to the limit, that’s what the former Head of the Armed Forces, Jock Stirrup, Lord Stirrup, told me earlier in the programme.  Lord Stirrup also said that Russian air incursions around the UK were mission rehearsals so has our ability to deal with the threat from Russia been diminished by the defence cuts?  I am joined now by Rory Stewart who is the Chair of the Defence Select Committee, he joins me now, a very good morning to you Mr Stewart.  Following on from what Lord Stirrup said to me a bit earlier, he said that these incursions are mission rehearsals but people would ask, mission rehearsals for what?  They couldn’t possibly attack.  

RORY STEWART: Well I think the first thing is this is old Soviet Union style stuff, this is stuff that the Russians did a lot in the 1970s and 80s.  We’ll see them doing other very strange things, they flew a nuclear bomber to Venezuela, they rehearsed an amphibious landing against the Baltic state, they deployed 40,000 people at 72 hours’ notice, they have committed about 100 billion to upgrading their nuclear arsenal and their military.  So I think behind the whole thing, almost regardless of what happens in Britain, you can see a much more punchy, much more aggressive Russia emerging.

DM: And President Putin then, would he be deterred by facing an increase in armed forces?   We had that NATO agreement didn’t we, to spend 2% of GDP on armed forces, Britain of course has signed up to that but many other NATO members perhaps won’t go that far.  Does President Putin sniff military weakness here?

RORY STEWART: I think he does.  He talks about it, you can hear him in public speeches say that he thinks NATO is weak and he combines it also with a paranoia so sometimes he says they’re weak, sometimes he says they’re threatening, which is why we need to be very careful.  You mentioned this 2% commitment, this is absolutely central.  Every party must in their manifesto commit to 2% spending on defence out of GDP because this is what this whole Wales summit was about, this is what NATO’s about, it’s passing the message to Putin that NATO is a serious organisation that’s prepared to defend its territory.   

DM: And in your role on the committee, are you going to police this then?  Lord Stirrup was saying as the economy picks up, you need to police that 2% limit and the armed forces then effectively have to get more and be built back up again.  

RORY STEWART: That’s completely central and it’s very important practically for the armed forces but it is also very important symbolically for Putin.  Deterrence is about psychology, it’s about whether he thinks we have the will, whether we want to take him on and that 2% figure is going to be something he is going to be looking at very carefully because that’s what we used to show that we were serious.  

DM: What’s your analysis of what he’s doing in Ukraine specifically?  I mean is he playing NATO, is he playing the west for fools because we’ve seen it time after time now, a military incursion gobbles up a bit more territory, then there’s a ceasefire, still some fighting, then it does calm down for a bit and then there’s another incursion and on they move.  What’s his end game?  What does he want from this?

RORY STEWART: Well he’s an opportunist, he’ll take what he can get.  He often has said in the past that he doesn’t think Ukraine is a real country, he talks about it being part of Russia, he also talks about Estonia not being a real country which is very worrying because that’s part of NATO but you can see he is just probing so Sergei Lavrov, his Foreign Minister, told the UK Foreign Secretary that they were not going to Crimea and then three days later they took Crimea.  Then everybody sat back and said okay, maybe they’ve got Crimea but they are not going to want Eastern Ukraine, then he pushed into Eastern Ukraine.  Then the plane was shot down and then everyone thought, okay maybe he’ll back off now that he’s shot down the plane and now they are pushing right up to the edge of Mariupol so essentially he just watches,  he’s not reckless.  He watches to see what reaction he gets and it is making him very popular, as you know he has got an 87% popularity rating in Moscow at the moment.   

DM: Yes but he also makes these ludicrous claims about no Russian forces being involved and where did these rebels suddenly get all this heavy artillery and things like that from but ultimately the territorial gains that have been made by the pro-Russian separatists particularly in Crimea, I mean they stand, Ukraine is never going to get them back is it?

RORY STEWART: Well it’s going to be very difficult, particularly in Crimea. Crimea is separate from Eastern Ukraine but Crimea is going to be very difficult to get back.  As you say, he is using what we would now probably call ambiguous warfare where he doesn’t come out explicitly, the tanks don’t roll across the border.  He sends across Russian paratroopers who he claims are on holiday, he says they are volunteers going across on holiday.  

DM: Or they get lost.   

RORY STEWART: Or they get lost on the other side and when we’re protecting ourselves, the reason we need much intelligence, much more understanding, much more focus, the reason we need to build up our understanding of Russia, is if he does stuff on the Baltic it will be like that.  It’s not going to be tanks rolling across the border, it’ll be three or four special forces turning up …  

DM: But the signal has to be sent in Ukraine, does it not, and therefore if the only language he understands at the moment is that of military might, okay no question of NATO boots on the ground there but the Ukrainians are saying you’ve got a lot of very, very good high tech weaponry, could we have some of it please?  And share some of your intelligence with us.  

RORY STEWART: I think intelligence makes a lot of sense.  We have to show our intentions.  The second thing I think above all this is money, Ukraine is facing a $40 billion black hole in its finances, if Ukraine simply can’t keep itself going financially it is not even going to be able to buy weaponry so from my point of view, before we even talk about weapons we need to prop up the finances of the Ukrainian state otherwise they can’t defend things like Mariupol.  That really matters to us because whatever has happened in East Ukraine, in West Ukraine there are pro-west, pro-European people eager to move forward.  They have got a very complicated government, there is a lot of corruption, the best thing we can do is try to support that government, financially above all.  

DM: Great to talk to you Mr Stewart, thank you very much indeed.  Rory Stewart, Chair of the Defence Select Committee there.  

RORY STEWART: Thank you .