Boris Johnson warned Vladimir Putin that any incursion into Ukrainian territory would be a ‘tragic miscalculation’ and Ukraine is within its rights to seek Nato membership
US President Joe Biden and British Prime Minister Boris Johnson. Picture: REUTERS/EVELYN HOCKSTEIN
But what Biden most needs is to sign up the EU to a package of sanctions sufficiently robust to deter Russia’s Vladimir Putin from any move to invade Ukraine. With Brexit, the US lost an especially close ally in EU discussions. As Biden tries to bridge the gap over sanctions, Johnson’s not even in the conversation.
Johnson likes to portray this moment as a turning point in European history, evoking the shifts at the end of the Cold War and World War 2 which reshaped the continent. Like his political hero Winston Churchill, he’s trying to position himself at the centre of the action. “Of course, it’s about Ukraine, and that matters deeply to us,” Johnson said at a joint press conference with Zelenskiy in Kyiv on Tuesday.
On Monday, when his officials had briefed that he had a call lined up with Putin, Johnson spent much of the afternoon defending himself in the House of Commons following a government report on the parties. The call didn’t happen. When he stood alongside Zelenskiy the next day, the first question he faced was about how he expected to be credible when the chatter back home was about how soon he might be kicked out of office.
The influence that Johnson retained in Berlin and Paris has been further eroded by his decision to pick fights with the EU over the Brexit trading arrangements that he himself had signed up to.
South Africa Latest News, South Africa Headlines
Similar News:You can also read news stories similar to this one that we have collected from other news sources.
LETTER: Comparison by Russian embassy is absurdWales is part of the UK but Ukraine is not part of Russia
Read more »
Biden orders nearly 3,000 US troops to Eastern Europe to counter RussiaThe United States will send nearly 3,000 extra troops to Poland and Romania to reinforce Eastern European NATO allies in the face of what Washington describes as a Russian threat to invade Ukraine, US officials said on Wednesday.
Read more »
US back on track with Honduras winThe United States reignited their World Cup qualifying campaign with a 3-0 victory over Honduras.
Read more »
TRADEMARK OP-ED: The cannabis app that got crushed under Spotify’s corporate machineryTwo recent court cases – in the US and the UK – highlight the perils of sailing too close to the wind in naming your product.
Read more »
Biden orders nearly 3,000 US troops to Eastern Europe to counter RussiaThe United States will send nearly 3,000 extra troops to Poland and Romania to reinforce Eastern European NATO allies in the face of what Washington describes as a Russian threat to invade Ukraine, US officials said on Wednesday.
Read more »
US says Russia planned to use 'graphic' fake video with corpses, actors to justify invasion of Ukraine'Our experience is that very little of this nature is not approved at the highest levels of the Russian government,' a Pentagon spokesperson said.
Read more »