Johnson says Putin wouldn't have invaded Ukraine if Trump had been president

Former British Prime Minister Boris Johnson believes that Donald Trump's unpredictability would be enough to convince Vladimir Putin not to go to full-scale war on Ukraine.

Johnson said this in an exclusive interview with The Telegraph on the eve of the publication of his memoirs Unleashed.

Johnson noted that from the Kremlin's point of view, there was a real risk that Trump would interpret an attack on a European country as an insult to the United States and the world order, and that he “could take tough measures.”

Trump frequently points out that Russia's invasion of Ukraine took place when he was not president of the United States - under the presidencies of Barack Obama in 2014 and Joe Biden in 2022. Johnson agrees that this is not a coincidence.

“One of Trump's virtues is his absolute unpredictability. That's one of the reasons why I look at how he's actually behaved in international affairs and compare it to what people say about him,” Johnson said.

“He expelled 60 Russian spies (after the Salisbury poisoning). He's been much tougher on Syria than Democratic administrations. He was tougher on the IRGC (Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps), and then he gave the Ukrainians a Javelin missile,” the former British prime minister added.

Johnson does not believe that Ukraine should be afraid of the Trump presidency.

“It's very, very important that we understand that Ukraine's struggle is absolutely existential for freedom and democracy in Europe, and if Ukraine fails, it will be an absolute disaster. And he understands that,” Johnson said.

“I don't think he wants to go down in history as the man who started his second term in office not by making America great, but by making the Soviet Union great again,” he added.

Author - Olena Madiak, 05/10/2024