Hunt warns: EU must stand together to deal with ‘aggressive’ Putin
Jeremy Hunt will today warn european leaders to stand ‘shoulder to shoulder’ with Britain and the US over russian aggression.
In a rebuke to Angela merkel and emmanuel macron, the Foreign Secretary is to demand fresh sanctions from the EU on ‘malign’ moscow.
He will use a speech in Washington to urge european and American allies to speak with ‘one voice’ against transgressions by moscow ‘whenever and wherever they occur, from the streets of Salisbury to the fate of Crimea’.
While Britain is tied to Brussels it can only impose sanctions as part of the EU and must wait on other members before action is taken. After Brexit, the UK will be able to take its own foreign policy decisions.
EU nations including Germany and France were among dozens of countries that expelled russian diplomats following march’s Novichok nerve agent attack on former double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter yulia in Salisbury.
The attack also resulted in the death of a British woman, Dawn Sturgess. But some EU leaders have since reached out to President Putin’s regime. German chancellor mrs merkel held talks with the russian leader in her country on Saturday after he had first stopped in Austria to attend the wedding of the country’s foreign minister Karin Kneissl.
French president mr macron has travelled to St Petersburg to call on russia to work ‘hand-in-hand’ with europe. And Italy has questioned whether sanctions imposed over the 2014 annexation of Crimea should continue.
mr Hunt’s visit follows the historic and controversial summit between the russian president and Donald Trump in Helsinki.
In a speech at the US Institute of Peace, mr Hunt is due to say that under mr Putin, russia’s ‘aggressive and malign behaviour undermines the international order that keeps us safe’.
He will say: ‘Of course we must engage with moscow, but we must also be blunt: russia’s foreign policy under President Putin has made the world a more dangerous place. And today, the United Kingdom asks its allies to go further by calling on the european Union to ensure its sanctions against russia are comprehensive, and that we truly stand shoulder to shoulder with the US.’
mr Hunt will also discuss Brexit in his speech, warning that a ‘catastrophic’ no-deal scenario represents ‘one of the biggest threats to european unity’.
Similar warnings he made last week that the country would regret a no-deal break ‘for generations’ caused an outcry from Brexiteers, and he was later forced to insist that Britain would still ‘survive and prosper’. Today he will urge the european Commission to ‘engage’ with Theresa may’s Chequers plan, saying: ‘Britain would, of course, find a way to prosper and we have faced many greater challenges in our history.
‘But the risk of a messy divorce, as opposed to the friendship we seek, would be a fissure in relations between european allies that would take a generation to heal – a geostrategic error for europe at an extremely vulnerable time in our history.’
The Foreign Secretary’s threeday visit to the US is expected to include talks with senior Trump officials. On Thursday he will address the United Nations Security Council in New york on the fight against Islamic State.
meanwhile, Brexit Secretary Dominic raab prepares to travel to Brussels tomorrow for a further round of talks with the EU’s chief negotiator michel Barnier.
‘Made the world more dangerous’