UK PM Boris Johnson Says Ukraine Will Win War With Russia Even If It's Not Easy

Perdana Menteri Inggris Boris Johnson. (Wikimedia Commons/Palácio do Planalto)

JAKARTA - British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said he believed Ukraine could win against Russia, on the BBC's Newsnight program on Thursday evening.

"I think Ukraine can definitely win. I don't think it will be easy, I think the situation for Ukraine is bleak, deplorable," said PM Johnson, according to The National News March 25.

"I don't think that we have seen anything like that for 80 years in Europe, and what (Russian President Vladimir) Putin is doing is absurd," he explained.

"But there's a sense where Putin has failed or lost because I think he really didn't know Ukraine would step up resistance like they did, and he completely misunderstood what Ukraine was."

"And far from extinguishing Ukraine as a country, he is strengthening it," Johnson said.

PM Johnson further said he was not optimistic that President Putin really wanted peace with Ukraine.

Asked about the seriousness of the peace talks between Russia and Ukraine, Prime Minister Johnson said "everything that goes in will be done".

"If this thing can be resolved, it will be fantastic. I have to tell you, that I'm not optimistic that Vladimir Putin really wants that," he said.

"I think he decided to double down and try Groznyfy the big Ukrainian cities, the way he's always tried to do and I think that's a tragic mistake. But apparently, that's what he's doing at the moment."

"Therefore, we need to do more as a West, intensify sanctions, send more missiles as we announced today, 6.000 more missiles, strengthen our sanctions, do more to stop Russia's gold leakage. All the ways in which we can tighten the screws on it," he explained.

PM Johnson said that even if NATO did not grant Ukraine full membership, allies would give the country so much support that Russia would not consider attacking again.

"Over time, you can imagine even if you can't have Article 5 guarantees for Ukraine, I mean, full NATO membership, inside the thermonuclear umbrella, as it were, you can imagine Ukraine's Western sympathizers will give so much through equipment, training, intelligence to create some kind of deterrence for Ukraine by denying the possibility of Russia attacking again," Johnson said.

"What I'm talking about is that it's so fortified, so strengthened Ukraine, that in the future it can't be digested by the Russian occupiers," he concluded.