This week the Prime Minister will call on the international community to make a renewed and concerted effort to ensure Putin fails in Ukraine.

In the days since Russia invaded Ukraine we have seen an unprecedented wave of international condemnation from across the globe. On Wednesday evening 141 nations voted to denounce Russia’s actions in only the 11th Emergency Special Session of the UN General Assembly ever held.

The same day, 38 countries, coordinated by the UK, led the largest ever referral to the International Criminal Court to ensure Putin will be held to account for his war crimes.

At the same time, more and more countries have stepped up to provide much-needed humanitarian and military support to the people of Ukraine. Nations across the globe have imposed the largest ever package of sanctions against a major economy.

On Monday the Prime Minister will welcome Canadian Prime Minister Trudeau and Dutch Prime Minister Rutte to Downing Street for discussions on how to turn these commitments into a concerted campaign of solidarity with Ukraine. On Friday he spoke to President Macron and the leaders of Turkey and Serbia.

On Tuesday, he will host leaders of the ‘V4’ group of Central European nations – the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia. These are countries already experiencing first-hand the humanitarian crisis rapidly engulfing the European continent.

The Prime Minister will tell leaders that, to ensure Putin fails in his ambitions, the international community must come together under a six-point plan of action to:

1. Mobilise an international humanitarian coalition for Ukraine
2. Support Ukraine in its efforts to provide for its own self-defence
3. Maximise the economic pressure on Putin’s regime
4. Prevent the creeping normalisation of what Russia is doing in Ukraine
5. Pursue diplomatic paths to de-escalation but only on the basis of full participation by the legitimate government of Ukraine
6. Begin a rapid campaign to strengthen security and resilience across the Euro-Atlantic area

Setting out his six-point plan today, the Prime Minister will say:

Putin must fail and must be seen to fail in this act of aggression. It is not enough to express our support for the rules-based international order – we must defend it against a sustained attempt to rewrite the rules by military force.

The world is watching. It is not future historians but the people of Ukraine who will be our judge.

Last week the UK increased its humanitarian support to Ukraine and the region to £220 million announced this year, including £25 million of match funding to the DEC appeal. The UK continues to supply defensive and lethal weaponry to Ukraine and the Prime Minister has spoken to Ukrainian President Zelenskyy daily to understand the Ukrainian Armed Forces’ needs.

The UK has already implemented the largest and most severe package of economic sanctions ever imposed on a major economy. We have brought in sanctions on President Putin, Sergey Lavrov, five Russian banks and more than 300 individuals and entities at the heart of Putin’s regime, and Belarus. We are preventing the Russian state from raising debt here and isolating all Russian companies from access to UK capital markets.

The government will continue to ratchet up pressure and use sanctions to degrade the Russian economy on a scale that the Kremlin, or any major economy, has ever seen before. On Friday the government announced new provisions to streamline the current legislation so we can respond even more swiftly and effectively to the current crisis.

The Prime Minister will host both Prime Minister Rutte and Prime Minister Trudeau in Downing Street for separate bilateral meetings and a joint trilateral meeting.

Tuesday’s meeting of the V4 will take place in London and include both a plenary session of all five leaders and separate bilateral meetings.

We must do more for Ukraine

Over the last week, in response to the gut-wrenching scenes in Ukraine, Western unity has been impressive and heartening. I know from my near-daily conversations with President Zelenskyy that this has provided Ukrainians with some comfort in their hour of need.

Never in my life have I seen an international crisis where the dividing line between right and wrong has been so stark, as the Russian war machine unleashes its fury on a proud democracy. Russia’s reckless attack on the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant reminds us just how grave the stakes are for everyone. Millions of people are fleeing from the violence, towards an uncertain future.

President Biden has displayed great leadership, consulting and convening allies, exposing the lie that America’s commitment to Europe is somehow diminished. The European Union has undertaken a remarkable effort to align behind severe sanctions on Russia. Dozens of European countries are now sending defensive equipment to Ukraine’s armed forces. But have we done enough for Ukraine? The honest answer is no.

Putin’s act of aggression must fail and be seen to fail. We must not allow anyone in the Kremlin to get away with misrepresenting our intentions to find post-facto justification for their war of choice. This is not a NATO conflict and it will not become one. No ally has sent combat troops to Ukraine. We have no hostility towards the Russian people and we have no desire to impugn a great nation, a world power and a founding member of the United Nations. We despair of the decision to send young innocent Russians into a bloody and futile war.

The truth is that Ukraine had no serious prospect of NATO membership in the near future – and we were ready to respond to Russia’s stated security concerns through negotiation. I and many other Western leaders have spoken to President Putin to understand his perspective. Mr Putin to understand his perspective. The United Kingdom even sent emissaries to Moscow before Russia’s invasion to deal directly with Defence Minister Gen. Sergei Shoigu and the chief of the general staff, Gen. Valery Gerasimov, who are spearheading this awful campaign.

It was now clear diplomacy never had a chance. But it is precisely because of our respect for Russia that we find the actions of the Putin regime so unconscionable. He is attempting the destruction of the very foundation of international relations and the United Nations Charter: the right of nations to decide their own future free from aggression and fear of invasion. His assault on Ukraine began with a confected pretext and a flagrant violation of international law. Now it is sinking further into a sordid campaign of war crimes and unthinkable violence against civilians.

Though there can be no comparison with the assault on Ukraine, we in Britain know something of President Putin’s ruthlessness. Four years ago, we endured the outcome of his order to his operatives to use chemical weapons to assassinate people in Salisbury in 2018 – and our allies rallied to our side. In our defence and foreign policy review, published a year ago, we warned that Russia remained the most acute security threat and we announced the biggest increase in defence spending since the end of the Cold War.

We also warned that the world was changing for the worse, entering into a period of competition in which authoritarian states would test the mettle of the West in every domain. Last year’s agreement between Britain, America and Australia to build nuclear submarines for the Australian navy demonstrated our shared resolve to meet these challenges in the Indo-Pacific. But we must restore effective deterrence in Europe where, for too long, the very success of NATO and of America’s security guarantee has bred complacency.

We have failed to learn the lessons of Russian behaviour that have led to this point. No one can say we were not warned: we saw what Russia did in Georgia in 2008, Ukraine in 2014 and even on the streets of the British city of Salisbury. And I know from speaking to my counterparts on recent visits to Poland and Estonia just how acutely they feel the threat.

It is no longer enough to express warm platitudes about the rules-based international order. We are going to have to actively defend it against a sustained attempt to rewrite the rules by force and other tools such as economic coercion. What happens in Europe will have profound implications worldwide.

We are pleased to see more nations now beginning to grasp this hard reality. In January, the UK was among a handful of European countries sending defensive aid to Ukraine. Now, more than 25 countries are part of that effort. Defence spending is going up, though it will take time for that to translate into capability.

These are welcome developments, but not going to be enough on their own to save Ukraine or keep the flame of freedom alive. Russia has overbearing force and apparently no regard for the laws of war. We need to prepare now for even darker days ahead.

So must begin a six-point plan for Ukraine, starting today.

First, we must mobilise an international humanitarian coalition. On Monday I will meet the leaders of Canada and the Netherlands in London to talk about creating the widest possible coalition to expose the outrages that are taking place in Ukraine. On Tuesday, I will host the leaders of Poland, Slovakia, Hungary and the Czech Republic, now on the frontline of a refugee crisis. The UK has 1,000 troops on standby for humanitarian operations on top of £220 million of aid. We must all work together to establish an immediate ceasefire and allow civilians safe passage, food and medical supplies.

Second, we must do more to help Ukraine to defend itself. More and more nations are willing to provide defensive equipment. We must act quickly to coordinate our efforts to support the legitimate government of Ukraine.

Third, we must maximise the economic pressure on Putin’s regime. We must go further on economic sanctions, expelling every Russian bank from SWIFT. We must go after the oligarchs, as the UK is doing – sanctioning over 300 elites and entities including Putin himself and giving our law enforcement agencies unprecedented powers to peel back the façade of dirty Russian money in London. But these measures will be insufficient unless Europe begins to wean itself off the Russian oil and gas that bankrolls Putin’s war machine.

Fourth, no matter how long it takes, we must prevent any creeping normalisation of what Russia does in Ukraine. The lesson from Russia’s invasion of Georgia in 2008 and seizure of Crimea in 2014 is that accepting the results of Russian aggression merely encourages more aggression. We cannot allow the Kremlin to bite off chunks of an independent country and inflict immense human suffering and then be allowed to creep back into the fold.

Fifth, we should always be open to diplomacy and de-escalation, provided that the legitimate government of Ukraine has full agency in any potential settlement. There can be no new Yalta decided over the heads of the people of Ukraine by external powers.

Sixth, we must act now to strengthen Euro-Atlantic security. This includes bolstering NATO’s eastern flank but also supporting non-NATO European countries that are subject to the same Kremlin playbook, such as Moldova, Georgia and the nations of the Western Balkans. And those who participate or enable Russian aggression, such as Belarus, will be subject to maximum sanctions.

Ukrainians have bravely defended their country. It is their valour that has United the international community. We can’t let them down.

Thank you very much, Mr Vice-President.

Good afternoon to you, excellencies, colleagues – if I may Mr Vice-President, before I make specific comments on this cluster of proposals, I would like to preface my remarks by quoting from the opening chapter of Our Common Agenda, and I quote, “75 years ago, our founders gathered in San Francisco promising to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war; to reaffirm faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person, in the equal rights of men and women, and of nations large and small; to establish conditions under which justice and respect for international law can be maintained, and to promote social progress and better standards of life in larger freedom.”

Yesterday, the overwhelming majority of the General Assembly demonstrated their faith in the enduring sanctity of those ambitions. They voted to stand with the brave people of Ukraine as they suffered the barbaric shelling and besiegement of their cities by Russian forces. They voted for the sovereignty and the territorial integrity of every Member State, and they stood up against those who seek to redraw the world’s borders, by threat or use of force – they stood up against President Putin’s war of choice.

The United Kingdom was proud to stand with them.

Turning to the specific recommendations in the cluster before us, this week’s report from the IPCC on Climate Impacts is a stark and a sobering reminder to the world about how climate change is affecting our planet. The UK agrees with the IPCC that global action to adapt to the changing climate has been insufficient, so climate and environment must remain at the forefront of our efforts.

The Glasgow Climate Pact made significant progress on adaptation, but we must urgently scale up our efforts. We call on countries that have not yet done so to prepare and submit adaptation communications as soon as possible, and by COP27 at the latest. We also need to scale up support and increase coherence between the adaptation, disaster prevention, and risk reduction, humanitarian, and aid communities. And as others have just said before me, we must also make further and urgent progress on finance and loss and damage.

The planned leaders meeting ahead of the 2023 global stocktake, named in both Our Common Agenda and the Glasgow Climate Pact, will be a critical moment between COP27 and COP28 for leaders to assess their commitments and take the necessary steps to close the 2030 ambition gap.

We welcome the proposed Strategic Foresight and Global Risk Report and the wider focus on cross-UN disaster risk forecasting, planning and management. It must be linked with existing mechanisms and used to inform and incentivise action. The Futures Lab recommendation could usefully bring together analysis from across the whole of the UN system, and we would appreciate more detail on the proposed Emergency Platform.

The United Kingdom supports the ambition of the proposed Global Vaccination Plan but believes the existing WHO vaccine strategy remains the best basis for international plans.

With global vaccine supply now projected to be sufficient to meet global demand, further UN work is needed to strengthen coordination among humanitarian actors to deliver vaccinations to populations at risk of being left behind. UN agencies must invest in improving on-the-ground coordination for integrated COVID-19 immunisation, testing, treatments and other essential primary health services.

The pandemic has also highlighted the critical importance of universal health coverage. We welcome the request for member states and the UN to accelerate their work on this goal, noting that strengthening primary healthcare in developing countries could save up to 60 million lives. We need enhanced coordination and collaboration within the UN system that complements the leadership of Member states on universal health coverage, and to implement fully the use of a One Health approach.

Thank you very much.

Thank you Madam President, and I’d like to thank Under-Secretary-General DiCarlo for her briefing and we look forward to hearing the briefing from Mr Grossi.

The United Kingdom and our partners called this urgent meeting because Russian forces last night attacked the largest nuclear power station in Europe.

We are grateful to the Ukrainian firefighters and authorities who got the fire under control and are working bravely to ensure the plant remains safe.

We support the work of the IAEA in Ukraine and are relieved that, so far, they have reported that none of the safety systems in the plant were affected, and that there was no release of radioactive material.

Colleagues, this is the first time that a State has attacked a fuelled and functioning nuclear power plant.

International law requires special protection for nuclear facilities, and it is difficult to see how Russia’s actions were compatible with its commitments under Article 56 of the first Additional Protocol of the Geneva Conventions.

It must not happen again.

Even in the midst of an illegal invasion of Ukraine, Russia must keep fighting away from, and protect the safety and security of, nuclear sites.

Colleagues, President Putin said yesterday that the “Special Military Operation” – or as everyone else calls it, the war – was going to plan.

Everyone around this table knows that is not true.

President Putin misjudged the strength, resilience and will of the Ukrainian people against his invasion.

He underestimated the world’s condemnation of his actions. 141 votes in the General assembly and the unprecedented sanctions on Russia demonstrate the strength of the global response.

Every day this war continues, the destruction it brings to Ukraine, the suffering it inflicts on the Ukrainian and Russian people, and the risks it poses to international peace and security, increase.

This must stop.

We call on Russia to end this violence, withdraw its troops and enter into serious peace negotiations.

I thank you, Madam President.