Born on a whim, Johnson’s plan for Putin died with a whimper

BORIS JOHNSON had arrived in Italy insisting he was a man with a plan.

The Foreign Secretary would use his powers of diplomacy to win the G7’s backing for threatening sanctions against Russia and Syria, which would in turn persuade Vladimir Putin that supporting Bashar al-Assad was no longer worth it.

Less than 24 hours later, the most important summit of his career appeared to have blown up in Mr Johnson’s face thanks to the intransigence of Germany and Italy – which critics say he should have seen coming. By the time he left Lucca yesterday, his standing on the world stage – and that of Britain – was unquestionably diminished and his own colleagues were suggesting his grand plan failed because it had been drawn up “on a whim”.

What made matters worse was that Mr Johnson had staked his credibility on gaining a consensus at the G7 meeting of foreign ministers.

Having cancelled a trip to Moscow last weekend to leave the way clear for Rex Tillerson, the US Secretary of State, who arrived in the Russian capital last night, he had been mocked as America’s “poodle” by Tim Farron, the Liberal Democrat leader.

His aides responded by saying that he had cancelled his trip to concentrate on winning the G7’s backing for his proposed carrot-andstick approach to Mr Putin – threatening new sanctions while offering Russia the chance of rejoining the G7 if it pulled out of Syria.

Had it worked, he would have been hailed as a skilled statesman. Instead, his plan was vetoed in favour of an independent investigation into who carried out last week’s nerve gas attack. Russia’s embassy in London gleefully said he had “botched it”.

The Foreign Secretary’s hopes were doomed from the start, according to those close to the negotiations, because Germany and Italy have vested interests in maintaining good relations with Moscow.

Existing sanctions on Russia, imposed after its annexation of Crimea in 2014, have already cost the Italians £3.4 billion in lost business, and Rome has resisted previous attempts to expand them. Germany, meanwhile, imports 35 per cent of its oil from Russia. A government source said Mr Johnson had failed to do his homework, telling The Daily Telegraph: “This was something that was sprung on a whim with no preparatory work. It was not particularly surprising that Germany voted it down because of the sensitivities over their energy supply from Russia.

“They would have cut off their own power. The lack of preparation has come back and bitten us.”

Rather than threatening Mr Putin with asset-freezing, the Germans preferred a policy of “reaching out to Russia” while Angelino Alfano, Italy’s foreign minister, said it was vital not to “push Russia into a corner”.

Mr Alfano said: “There is no consensus at this time for new sanctions as an efficient method to reach our goal.”

Sigmar Gabriel, the German foreign minister, said Russia and its ally Iran both had to be involved in the process of ending the conflict in Syria. He said: “Not everyone may like it, but without Moscow and without Tehran there will be no solution for Syria.”

Mr Johnson’s aides insisted he had secured the agreement he wanted, because the ministers had agreed that sanctions against Russian and Syrian military officials could be threatened if an independent investigation by the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons proved Syria was to blame for the nerve gas attack.

But Jean-Marc Ayrault, the French foreign minister, told a rather different story. “The question wasn’t mentioned by anyone, except Boris Johnson, but we didn’t talk about it any further,” he said. A 30-page statement from the G7 setting out what had been agreed at the meeting made no mention of sanctions in relation to Russia or Syria.

It meant Mr Tillerson arrived in Russia last night with a carrot, but no stick, and with no clarity over whether he would even be granted an audience with Mr Putin.

Fyodor Lukyanov, head of the Council on Foreign and Defence Policy, a think tank that advises the Russian foreign ministry, said Mr Tillerson and Mr Johnson had fundamentally misunderstood Mr Putin’s mindset.

He said: “The suggestion that Mr Tillerson might offer something that will change the Kremlin’s mind on Assad is naïve, and if someone seriously believes in that, it means people still don’t understand at all how Putin works. Abandoning Assad would be a profound change and a massive blow to the credibility of Russia in the eyes of the Western and non-Western countries.

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