British Prime Minister Boris Johnson records a speech at Downing Street after chairing an emergency Cobra meeting to discuss Britain’s response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022 in London, Britain. Jeff J Mitchell/Pool via REUTERS/File Photo
AHMEDABAD, India, April 20 – British Prime Minister Boris Johnson has said any peace talks over Ukraine are likely to collapse as he compared talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin to negotiations with a crocodile.
Johnson said dealing with Putin is like “a crocodile when it has your leg in its jaws” and said it was vital that the West continued to arm Ukraine.
The prime minister was speaking on his trip to India, where he will encourage his counterpart Narendra Modi to end his neutrality over the war in Ukraine. He downplayed the likelihood that India would end its long-standing ties with Russia.
“It’s very difficult to see how Ukrainians can deal with Putin now, given his apparent lack of good faith,” Johnson told reporters. “His apparent strategy is to try to devour and conquer as much of Ukraine as possible and maybe conduct some kind of negotiation from a position of strength.”
Johnson said world leaders, including US President Joe Biden, agreed this week on a call that they would continue to supply Ukraine with weapons, including artillery, while Russia continued its attacks on Ukraine’s east intensify
Ukraine and Russia have not held face-to-face peace talks since March 29, and Ukrainian allegations that Russian troops have committed atrocities in the city of Bucha near Kyiv have soured sentiment. Moscow has denied the allegations.
Russia captured its first city in eastern Ukraine this week as part of a fresh attack that Ukrainian officials have dubbed the Battle of Donbass.
INDIAN NEUTRALITY
Johnson said Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy told him he was confident in driving Russian troops out of the eastern Donbass region but that his troops were unlikely to recapture Crimea, which Russia captured eight years ago.
“The view of the President of Ukraine, if I understand him correctly and I often speak to him, is that he actually wants Russian forces to be driven out of their existing positions in Donetsk and Luhansk. So that’s quite a maximalist position, but in Crimea they’re not that maximalist,” he said.
Putin has made it clear that he wants to take more Ukrainian territory and could launch another attack on the country’s capital, Kyiv, Johnson said.
“How are you supposed to negotiate with a crocodile when it has its leg stuck down your throat? That’s the difficulty Ukrainians are facing. We just have to continue with the strategy, arm them,” he said.
Johnson said when he meets Modi in New Delhi on Friday he will encourage India to support Ukraine. But he accepted that India was likely to maintain its ties with Russia.
“I have already spoken to Narendra Modi about Ukraine and indeed Indians have condemned what happened in Bucha,” he said. “But Britain in particular needs to recognize that India has a historic relationship with Russia. I think we need to be aware of that and just point out where I’m afraid Putin is badly failing Russia.”
India, which is the world’s largest buyer of Russian arms and imports its oil, abstained in a United Nations vote condemning the invasion and imposed no sanctions on Moscow.
Reporting by Andrew MacAskill, editing by Kylie MacLellan, Chris Reese, Jonathan Oatis and Gerry Doyle