Truss: Sanctions could end if Russia takes the ‘off ramp’
The Foreign Secretary tells political editor Edward Malnick the West is uniting against Putin, but she remains determined to fix the Northern Ireland Protocol
BRITAIN could lift the sanctions crippling Russia if Vladimir Putin withdraws from Ukraine and commits to “no further aggression”, Liz Truss says today.
In an interview with The Sunday Telegraph, the Foreign Secretary sets out a blueprint for the so-called “off ramp” that the Russian president could be offered to halt his assault on Ukraine.
Ms Truss, who discloses that she has established a “negotiations unit” in the Foreign Office to aid peace talks, says sanctions on Russian banks, firms and oligarchs could be dropped in the event of “a full ceasefire and withdrawal”.
Mr Putin would also have to agree to refrain from future military aggression, with the threat of “snapback sanctions”, which could instantly be applied, to enforce the commitment.
Ms Truss’s intervention is the first official confirmation that Britain could lift sanctions as part of a peace settlement between Russia and Ukraine.
It marks a shift from when the Foreign Secretary had said she could not see a situation in which Roman Abramovich, the most prominent of the sanctioned oligarchs, would be allowed into the UK again. It also chimes with remarks by Antony Blinken, the US secretary of state, who said US sanctions against Russia were “not designed to be permanent” and could “go away” if Moscow changed its behaviour.
The interview comes after the Kremlin gave its first indication that it plans to scale back its invasion, as an army chief said Moscow’s “main goal” was now the “liberation” of the Donbas region on Ukraine’s eastern border with Russia.
Ms Truss added: “Sanctions should only come off with a full ceasefire and withdrawal, but also commitments that there will be no further aggression. And also, there’s the opportunity to have snapback sanctions if there is further aggression in future.”
She also disclosed plans to advertise Britain’s Homes for Ukraine scheme via text messages to refugees crossing into Poland. Under the scheme, people can sponsor named Ukrainians to come to the UK, by offering accommodation for at least six months.
She is Foreign Secretary at the time of a war in Europe, Iran on the verge of developing nuclear weapons, and the UK charting its own course after 47 years of EU membership. It is, perhaps, therefore not unreasonable that Liz Truss has concluded that now is the busiest time for foreign policy since the 1980s. It also becomes quickly apparent that her experience of one seismic task is influencing her approach to another.
While reiterating her determination to “fix” the Northern Ireland Protocol agreed as part of the UK’s exit deal with the EU, Ms Truss states: “There is a difference between a negotiation between countries who respect the rule of law, respect basic principles like sovereignty, and dealing with a rogue state like Russia.
“I have frank conversations with all our partners, whether it’s the United States, whether it’s the EU, whether it’s Japan, whether it’s India, [and] there are always going to be differences that we need to resolve. But those types of differences between friends and allies are different from the scale and the sheer belligerence and aggression and lying of Russia... The scale of the issue that we’re facing with Russia is so big, it’s so important, it’s so vital that we all stick together.”
Not even the most ardent Brexiteers would take issue with her distinction between the EU and Vladimir Putin’s Russia – though some may be less sanguine if it emerges that the Foreign Secretary’s comparison emerges as the precursor to a climbdown from her earlier insistence on holding the feet of EU leaders to the fire to secure urgent changes to the protocol.
She returns to the comparison between Russia and the UK’s Western allies again later, noting that when considering “a totalitarian state” such as Russia, differences between the UK and its allies “seem a lot smaller”.
Ms Truss sticks to the government line that Article 16, the mechanism that the UK could trigger to override parts of the Northern Ireland Protocol, “remains on the table” as an option.
But her rhetoric about the importance of harmonious relations with the EU appears a far cry even from Boris Johnson’s remarks just six weeks ago, that “if our friends don’t show the requisite common sense then of course we will trigger Article 16”.
Senior Brexiteer MPs, including at least two members of the Cabinet, have been arguing that the UK must trigger Article 16 in order to break the logjam in talks over the protocol and secure meaningful changes to fix the problems ministers have warned that the agreement is causing to Northern Ireland businesses.
Ms Truss still insists “that the Northern Ireland Protocol isn’t working to protect the Belfast/Good Friday Agreement” and that the Government’s priority is to protect that deal. But she does not deny having shelved the idea of triggering Article 16 any time soon, due to the risk of undermining a united front with the EU in the face of Russian aggression.
Earlier this month, The Sunday Telegraph revealed that Ms Truss had written to Mr Johnson setting out plans to put the potential triggering of Article 16 on hold because of the Ukraine crisis and instead help Northern Ireland businesses with an “economic stimulus” package including tax cuts. Such a move could only take place with the backing of Rishi Sunak, the Chancellor. Amid internal discussions over the issue, Ms Truss will only say of the protocol: “I am working to fix it as a matter of urgency.”
Ms Truss, 46, was promoted from her role as international trade secretary last September, replacing Dominic Raab as Foreign Secretary. Within weeks, she says, it had become clear that Russia was going to dominate her time in the post. “By December last year we had a very strong view that he was likely to invade.” The “we” here includes a multitude of Russia experts and intelligence officials who have been working to get the Foreign Secretary up to speed with the Kremlin’s playbook, which some argue has changed very little since the Cold War.
Among those who advised Ms Truss as she navigated meetings with Sergei Lavrov, her Russian opposite number, in the run-up to the invasion, was Sir Tim Barrow, the Foreign Office’s political director. Sir Tim joined the Foreign Office in 1986, where he learnt Russian before being posted to Kyiv in 1989 and Moscow the following year. Ms Truss jokingly refers to Sir Tim as a “relic” when she later introduces him at Lancaster House, a 19th-century building often used to host foreign dignitaries. Sir Tim, 58, and the Foreign Secretary were both at Lancaster House for an away day for the Foreign Office’s board on Friday, and Ms Truss sat down for an interview with The Telegraph in a lavishly decorated ground-floor room.
“This is one of the many reasons why I think the UK has such an important role to play in this crisis,” Ms Truss says, of figures such as Sir Tim. “We do have Russia experts, we do have Ukraine experts, and we have people who were around at the end of the Cold War, who were doing things like supporting the Baltic governments in exile. And we’ve seen the playbook again, in Syria, in other conflicts Russia has been involved in, but we also saw it during the Cold War. And some of those techniques that were there then are there now.”
As a more junior Cabinet minister under Theresa May, Ms Truss’s kitchen table in her south-west Norfolk constituency was the subject of regular Instagram posts documenting family breakfasts and “pizza Thursdays” in the home of the Cabinet’s most enthusiastic adopter of social media.
Today, her posts are dominated by pictures of the now Foreign Secretary standing behind lecterns and holding talks with world leaders and fellow foreign ministers. Her kitchen table, too, has become a hub of discussions about the finer details of foreign policy.
“My elder daughter is actually studying the Cold War so there are quite a lot of family discussions about what happened then and the parallels to what’s happening now,” says Ms Truss. She has two daughters with her husband Hugh O’Leary, the eldest of whom, Frances, is 16.
The Ukraine crisis “is taking up my night and day”, she says, pointing out that it is difficult to switch off after conversations in which her Ukrainian counterpart calls from Kyiv to press her for more sanctions and weapons.
Ms Truss has played a leading role in the campaign for crippling sanctions against Moscow, and is now continuing to push Western countries to end all oil and gas imports from Russia. Along with Ben Wallace, the Defence Secretary, she has also been working to counter disinformation before it can take hold, setting up the Government Information Cell to dispel Kremlin falsehoods relating to the invasion.
“We’ve been exposing the plans to create a false flag around chemical weapons and I think this has been crucial in removing the aspect of surprise from what Putin is doing, and also convincing the international community that Putin is the aggressor. He’s been unable to create a pretext for his invasion.”
Ms Truss also reveals that she has set up a specialist negotiations unit to provide support to Ukraine “when the Russians are serious about negotiations.” She adds: “I don’t believe they are serious at present and that’s why I’ve said we need to be tough to get peace. We need to double down on sanctions. We need to double down on the weapons that we’re sending Ukraine. But when there does come a time for negotiations, I want the UK to be a key part of making sure we support Ukraine to get a deal that works.”
Ms Truss is convinced that a continuation, and in some cases escalation, of the current tactics being deployed by Ukraine and the West could bring Putin to the negotiating table. “Putin needs to be put under even more pressure”, she says, both “domestically through the economy and Russia being debilitated” and by countries such as the UK continuing to supply lethal weapons to Ukraine.
“With the supply of more weaponry to the Ukrainians, I think we could see his attempts to invade stall. Over time, this will bear down on Putin’s ability to succeed and will ensure that he loses in Ukraine. And at that point, we need to make sure that there isn’t a repeat of the Minsk process – that we actually end up in a situation where there is a genuine ceasefire, there’s a genuine withdrawal of troops from Ukraine, and there are real levers on Russia in the future to stop any future aggression.”
The Minsk agreements were designed to secure a ceasefire between Ukraine and Russia-backed separatists in the east of the country in 2014 and 2015, in a process brokered by Germany and France. “We should have been part of those negotiations,” says Ms Truss, who was environment secretary at the time of the talks, when David Cameron’s coalition was in power. “We should have done more to stop Putin in 2014. And we are essentially facing the situation we are in now because – and this is not just Britain – the entire West, the entire free world, didn’t do enough to stop Putin.”
Lessons have been learnt, she says. “What we know is that Russia signed up to multiple agreements they simply don’t comply with. So there needs to be hard levers. Of course, sanctions are a hard lever. Those sanctions should only come off with a full ceasefire and withdrawal, but also commitments that there will be no further aggression. And also, there’s the opportunity to have snapback sanctions if there is further aggression in future. That is a real lever that I think can be used. That wasn’t used in 2014.”
Her remarks about the conditions for lifting the current sanctions appear to sketch out Britain’s blueprint for the “off ramp” that could be offered to Putin to end his invasion, and chime with remarks by Antony Blinken, her US counterpart, who has said that American sanctions against Russia
‘I want the UK to be a key part of making sure we support Ukraine to get a deal that works’
‘We have differences with the EU but fundamentally we all believe in freedom’
could “go away” if Moscow changes its behaviour. Mr Blinken has said that, for US sanctions to be lifted, there must be a Russian withdrawal that is “in effect, irreversible”, so “Russia won’t pick up and do exactly what it’s doing in a year or two years or three years”.
Ms Truss echoes the White House message when asked about Joe Biden’s remarks that Nato “would respond” if Putin uses chemical weapons in Ukraine. “That would represent an escalation of this appalling conflict. We’ve already seen abhorrent acts committed against civilians in Ukraine, but the use of chemical weapons would represent an escalation and there would be a response.”
In the final months of Ms May’s premiership, Ms Truss was seen as constantly “on manoeuvres” and attempting to flaunt her own potential leadership credentials. But as the Prime Minister’s position weakened in late 2021 and the first weeks of 2022 amid several scandals, she has shown dogged loyalty towards Boris Johnson.
Last month, one ally of Ms Truss suggested that such loyalty may still be influenced by her designs on the top job remaining as strong as ever. Ms Truss’s eventual leadership pitch, the ally claimed, will be “Boris without the tax rises”. “If Boris leaves on a low point it is a very easy campaign for Rishi and Jeremy [Hunt] to run as safe pairs of hands. It would be easier for Liz to run if Boris has gone on a high.”
Ms Truss is careful not to criticise the Spring Statement delivered last week by Mr Sunak. But she does pinpoint “supply-side reforms”, such as tax cuts and deregulation, including an overhaul of childcare, as key to reducing the cost of living. “The Chancellor has committed that taxes are going to be cut. That’s very important because, ultimately, the way to get the cost of living down in the long term is supply-side reform, and it’s doing what we need to do to generate economic growth. And whether it’s on making childcare more affordable or whether it’s making housing more affordable, that is what will bring down the cost of living.”
She defends Mr Johnson against claims that he likened the Ukrainian resistance against Putin’s invasion to the UK’s decision to leave the EU, in a speech last weekend. “I was sitting in the audience for that speech and I certainly don’t think that’s what he was doing. He was talking about the British people’s right to exercise their democratic freedom, as part of a general speech about freedom.”
Here, she segues into another reminder of the closeness with which Britain is working with the EU on the Western response to Putin’s invasion.
“One of the points I would make about this crisis is we have worked very, very closely with the European Union. The EU are doing a lot of work to reduce their dependence on Russian gas, including sourcing liquid natural gas from the States and I support those efforts. Of course, there are some areas with which we have differences with the EU. But fundamentally, we are all democratic nations, we all believe in freedom and the right of people to select their own governments, and we are very much united in the fight.”