Linda Reynolds (WA, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

Winston Churchill said in 1938 that an appeaser is one who feeds the crocodile, hoping against hope it will eat him last. These words were quite prophetic five days after the disastrous Munich Peace Conference in September 1938. It was true then, and it is just as true today. 24 February will mark the third-year anniversary of the illegal invasion by Russia of Ukraine. For 1,085 days, Ukraine has stood defiant and resilient against Russia's unlawful invasion. The cost is incalculable. Today, we reflect on the Munich Security Conference announcement that next week Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin will meet to decide the future of Ukraine without Ukraine.

The conditions of not returning Ukraine's pre-2014 borders and disallowing Ukraine's NATO membership, to my mind, is appeasement—appeasement in Munich once again. Despots and dictators never ever respect appeasement. They patiently and ruthlessly exploit it. If Vladimir Putin is appeased once again next week, it will simply buy him time to regroup and continue his relentless annexation. Appeasement did not work in 2014, when Russia illegally invaded and annexed Crimea, but yet the rest of the world sat by, Sudetenland-like, and said, 'We'll give him Crimea; he won't do anything more.' Well, clearly it did not work. It simply emboldened Putin to keep going. Ukraine's war is our war. It is the West's war. It is our war. Slava Ukraini.