As the war in Ukraine approaches its grim anniversary, it was striking to hear the former prime minister say, with regret, that the bloody conflict could have been prevented in the first place, claiming it was failures of the West, including times when he was foreign secretary and then in Number 10, that emboldened Putin.<\/p>\n
Essentially, Boris Johnson’s suggestion is that nearly a decade of foreign policy mistakes led to what’s happening now. That claim will be argued about for decades to come. But his eye-catching suggestion to send UK and allies’ troops to Ukraine goes further than any suggestion currently being made by the UK or its partners in what Sir Keir Starmer called a “coalition of the willing” in our studio almost a year ago<\/a>.<\/p>\n The former head of the military, sitting alongside Johnson, was one of the architects of that plan, preparing forces to be ready to go and support Ukraine if, and only if, there is a peace deal.<\/p>\n Back in 2022, Europe pledged support to Ukraine, but said sending troops was beyond what they were prepared to do. Switching the focus of the “coalition of the willing” to sending troops now would be a hugely significant political move. But it’s not impossible that allies could discuss alternatives such as creating a safe zone in the west of the country or opening up Lviv airport, as a precursor to a ceasefire.<\/p>\n Johnson’s suggestion seems borne out of his own frustration, particularly given his ongoing links with Ukraine, that the allies’ response has been too halting – enough support so that Ukraine can keep fighting, not enough to bring an end to the war.<\/p>\n Both Johnson and Radakin were eager to emphasise that, in their view, President Zelensky has already made concessions, and that the only way to bring peace is to intensify the pressure on the Kremlin, economically, and militarily.<\/p>\n The former prime minister told me it was “deluded” to believe that the Russian leader wants peace, and he had told the White House as much. But as the loss of life on both sides continues, it is not clear how much further Western allies are willing to go, or how much Vladimir Putin is ready to listen.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"As the war in Ukraine approaches its grim anniversary, it was striking to hear the former prime minister…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":438241,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[49,50,51,47,52,48],"class_list":["post-438240","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/438240","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=438240"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/438240\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/438241"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=438240"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=438240"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=438240"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}