Russia would be crazy to use nuclear weapons, says Boris
VLADIMIR Putin would ‘tender Russia’s resignation from the club of civilised nations’ if he uses nuclear weapons in Ukraine, Boris Johnson said last night.
The former prime minister warned the move would mean the Russian tyrant losing support from countries still willing to give him ‘the benefit of the doubt’.
And he said the West would hit Moscow with even tougher sanctions, plunging Russia into ‘a kind of cryogenic economic freeze’ which could spark a civil war.
There have been growing fears the Kremlin could resort to using nuclear weapons in Ukraine following a series of humiliating military losses amid his faltering invasion.
Asked about the prospect of Putin using nuclear weapons, Mr Johnson told Sky News: ‘I don’t think he will. I think he’d be crazy to do so. I think what would happen is he’d immediately tender Russia’s resignation from the club of civilised nations. It would be a total disaster for his country.
‘The current economic punishment that the West has been able to dish out would be massively intensified.
‘Russia would be put into a kind of cryogenic economic freeze. And I
‘Total disaster for his country’
think he would lose a lot of the kind of middle ground, tacit acquiescence that he’s had.
‘I mean if you look at sub-Saharan Africa, if you look at Latin America… there’s a lot of willingness to give Putin the benefit of the doubt. That will go the minute he does anything like that.’
Mr Johnson, who led the West’s response to Russia’s invasion after striking a friendship with Ukrainian premier Volodymyr Zelensky, added: ‘He [Putin] would also, crucially, lose the patronage of the Chinese and above all in his own country he would trigger an absolutely hysterical reaction.’
Mr Johnson’s successor, Liz Truss, was said to have become ‘obsessed’ with the weather forecast during the final days of her ill-fated premiership after Russia threatened the use of a nuclear weapon over the Black Sea.
Reports at the weekend claimed she harboured growing fears that the fallout from such an explosion would hit the UK with radiation being blown in this direction. She also previously spoke of her concern that Putin could use nuclear weapons in Ukraine.
Last week, Putin denied having any plans to use nuclear weapons, telling the Valdai Club think-tank: ‘There is no point, neither political, nor military.’
During the deranged speech he
repeated claims that Ukraine is an ‘artificial’ state and that Kyiv was planning to detonate a dirty bomb and then blame Moscow.
He has repeatedly referred to his invasion of Ukraine as a ‘special
military operation’. During his time as prime minister, Mr Johnson put Britain at the forefront of Western efforts in supporting Ukraine.
He even visited Ukrainian capital
Kyiv three times as he forged a close bond with Mr Zelensky.
The ex-prime minister insisted it was not ‘credible’ for Putin to keep hold of the four further Ukrainian regions the Russian leader has annexed since first launching his brutal invasion in late-February. Mr Johnson added: ‘He will lose those.’
Meanwhile, Mr Johnson said he did not think it is ‘credible’ for Putin to retain the territory his troops still hold in regions such as Kherson, in southern Ukraine.
It comes after it was revealed the head of the notorious Russian mercenary organisation, the Wagner Group, carries as much influence with the Russian leader as his foreign and defence ministers.
MPs were yesterday warned that Yevgeny Prigozhin was an ‘important tool’ for the Kremlin as he enabled Putin to deny responsibility for some of the regime’s most controversial actions in Ukraine.
Giving evidence to the Commons foreign affairs committee, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, an exiled businessman who spent a decade in jail after falling foul of the Russian leader, said that if Putin’s grip on power ever began to slip, Mr Prigozhin and his associates would seek to ‘continue war’ in Ukraine.