The PM has warned Putin he could face the ‘condemnation of history’ if he chooses to invade Ukraine
Boris Johnson has said that Britain will deploy troops to protect Ukraine if Russia decides to invade the country, as he predicted that Russian forces would face “ferocious resistance” from Ukrainian freedom fighters.
Boris Johnson said: “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.”
Meanwhile, the US is considering sending 8,500 troops to Eastern Europe to act as a deterrent to a possible Russian invasion of Ukraine.
But both Britain and the US have ruled out deploying Nato troops.
Britain could still deploy armour, infantry, artillery, engineering, medical and intelligence units to Ukraine, the Telegraph reports.
The Prime Minister told MPs: “What we are all discussing at the moment is what we can do to fortify Nato’s eastern/south-eastern flank. The French are looking at Romania. There are questions about Hungary and what we might do there.”
He warned Russian president Vladimir Putin that he would face the “condemnation of history” if he chose the “tragic and futile” path of “bloodshed and destruction”.
If President Putin were to choose the path of bloodshed and destruction in Ukraine, he must realise that it would be both tragic and futile.
My full statement: https://t.co/Ff6LatbVu8 pic.twitter.com/aenTopTO5x
— Boris Johnson (@BorisJohnson) January 25, 2022
Speaking in the House of Commons, the PM said the UK and its allies would hit Russia with “heavy economic sanctions” if its troops crossed the border with Ukraine.
“Ukrainians have every moral and legal right to defend their country, and I believe their resistance would be dogged and tenacious,” Boris Johnson said as he rejected Russian demands to ban Ukraine from joining Nato.
“If Russia pursues this path, many Russian mothers’ sons will not be coming home.”
The Prime Minister called for diplomacy in order to prevent a similar conflict to that seen in Bosnia in the 1990s.
He added that Ukraine had “scarcely known a day of peace” since Crimea was annexed by Russia in 2014, as he accused Putin of placing a “gun to Ukraine’s head and trying to divide Europe along the lines of the old Iron Curtain during the Cold War.
The Prime Minister warned Russia that if its aim was to keep Nato forces away from its borders, then invading Ukraine could “scarcely be more counterproductive.”
On Sunday, deputy PM Dominic Raab said the UK would be “extremely unlikely” to send troops to Ukraine.
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