Boris Johnson was on Saturday playing the role he loves best — that of a latter day Winston Churchill — seeking to stiffen the resolve of the west at a security conference in the Bavarian capital of Munich.
The British Prime Minister said that if Russia invades Ukraine, the West “will sanction Russian individuals, and companies of strategic importance to the Russian state and we will make it impossible for them to raise finance on the London capital markets”.
Always ready with a colourful turn of phrase, the former newspaper Daily Telegraph columnist pledged the UK would “open up the Matryoshka dolls of Russian-owned companies and Russian-owned entities to find the ultimate beneficiaries within. The risk now is that people would draw the conclusion that aggression pays and that ‘might is right’.”
The Home Office in London has scrapped a visa scheme offering rich foreign investors fast-track residency, amid pressure on ministers over UK links to Russia.
It was from Munich that Neville Chamberlain returned in September 1938 after he had agreed a “peace in our time” document with Hitler — just before the onset of World War II.
Boris is trying to show he is made of sterner stuff. He was speaking hours after President Biden had said in a televised address from the White House that the US had “reason to believe” that Russian forces were “planning to and intend to attack Ukraine in the coming week, in the coming days” — and driving on to the capital, Kiev.
With US Vice-President Kamala Harris, secretary of state Antony Blinken and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz also at the security conference, Boris said: “We should not underestimate the gravity of this moment and what is at stake. As I speak to you today, we do not fully know what President Putin intends, but the omens are grim and that is why we must stand strong together.”
Melinda Simmons, the British ambassador to Ukraine, has announced she hopes to be working in Kiev again “as soon as possible” after it was confirmed the UK’s embassy was being “temporarily” relocated to the west of the country in Lviv, near the border of Poland.
Boris said that “every time western ministers have visited Kiev, we have reassured the people of Ukraine and their leaders that we stand four-square behind their sovereignty and independence.
“How hollow, how meaningless, how insulting those words would seem if at the very moment when their sovereignty and independence is imperilled we simply look away.”