UK set to send troops to defend Nato allies
BRITAIN is prepared to deploy troops to protect Nato allies in Europe should Russia invade Ukraine, Boris Johnson said, as he warned Vladimir Putin faces “ferocious” Ukrainian resistance.
The Prime Minister also said the UK and its allies stand ready to impose “heavy economic sanctions” on Russia and voiced fears that any invasion would result in “bloodshed comparable to the first war in Chechnya or Bosnia”.
Mr Johnson told the House of Commons: “If Russia pursues this path, many Russian mothers’ sons will not be coming home. The response in the international community would be the same and the pain that would be inflicted on the Russian economy will be the same.”
He made an appeal for diplomacy to resolve the tensions and avoid a war that would “earn and would deserve the condemnation of history”.
Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer said
his party “stands resolute” in supporting Ukraine’s independence and sovereignty.
Earlier, Foreign Secretary Liz Truss failed to rule out UK combat troops being sent to help defend Ukraine – but told MPs it is “unlikely”.
Mr Johnson, making a statement to the Commons, went on to say: “The British Army leads the Nato battle group in Estonia and if Russia invades Ukraine, we would look to contribute to any new Nato deployments to protect our allies in Europe.”
He also told MPs the UK could not “bargain away” the vision of a free Europe which emerged between 1989 and 1991, adding: “We will not reopen that divide by agreeing to overturn the European Security Order because Russia has placed a gun to Ukraine’s head, nor can we accept the doctrine implicit in Russian proposals that all states are sovereign, but some are more sovereign than others.
“The draft treaty published by Russia in December would divide our continent once again between free nations and countries whose foreign and defence policies are explicitly constrained by the Kremlin in ways that Russia would never accept for herself.”
He went on: “There is nothing new about large and powerful nations using the threat of brute force to terrify reasonable people into giving way to otherwise unacceptable demands.
“But if President Putin was to choose the path of bloodshed and destruction, he must realise that it’d be both tragic and futile, and nor should we allow him to believe that he could easily take some smaller portion of Ukraine – to salami-slice – because the resistance would be ferocious.”