Ex-prime minister Boris Johnson is urging the West to escalate its military support of Ukraine with tanks, warplanes, and other materiel, confidently asserting that a nuclear war will not happen at the World Economic Forum summit in Davos, Switzerland.
Johnson, whose profile page on the World Economic Forum’s website still lists him as Foreign and Commonwealth Secretary of the United Kingdom — in fact has been left on the parliamentary back benches since his ouster — has looked to his enthusiastic support for the Ukrainian war effort as a key pillar of his political legacy, given he failed to cut taxes, take back control of his country’s borders, or deliver any more than the half-Brexit negotiated by predecessor Theresa May.
“Putin wants to present [the war in Ukraine] as a nuclear stand-off between NATO and Russia. Nonsense. He’s not going to use nuclear weapons, OK?” the Conservative (Tory) politician told his audience in the Swiss Alps.
“He’s like the fat boy in Dickens, he wants to make our flesh creep. He wants us to think about it. He’s never going to do it,” he added, in what is believed to be a reference to a character in The Pickwick Papers by Victorian author Charles Dickens.
“He’s not going to do it. Don’t go down that rabbit hole, stop it.”
West Using Ukraine as 'Tool' Against Russia, British Tanks 'Will Burn' – Kremlin https://t.co/RjARVVPSVo
— Breitbart London (@BreitbartLondon) January 16, 2023
Johnson made the comments at a Ukrainian Breakfast event, also attended by President Volodymyr Zelensky, albeit remotely, with the Briton saying he was “lost in admiration” for the Ukrainian leader.
“How can you escalate against a guy who is doing all-out war against a civilian population?” he said of his imagined critics, as if Russian forces could not significantly up the ante against Ukraine by, for example, deploying relatively low-yield, tactical nuclear weapons near civilian areas.
The Tory said the number one reason Putin would not resort to such methods was that it would paralyse the Russian economy, with the Chinese and the Indians, for example, predicted to withdraw “the benefit of the doubt” from him and cease trading, and “terrify” his own citizens in Russia.
At another event in Davos’s “Ukraine House”, Johnson received a small medal and honorary citizenship of Kyiv from the Ukrainian capital’s mayor, former heavyweight boxing champion Vitali Klitschko, and urged the West to send tanks and warplanes to Ukraine.
The United Kingdom became the first country to pledge Western heavy tanks, namely a small shipment of around fourteen British-made Challenger 2s, to Ukraine earlier this month, in hopes that this would prod other European powers and possibly the United States into sending German-made Leopard 2s and M1 Abrams tanks in more significant numbers.
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