Johnson to Ukranian parliament: You will win the war.
“Ukrainian troops will defeat the Russians and the country will be ‘liberated’ from occupation,” Boris Johnson told the Ukrainian parliament, adding that this was a “war against evil”.
The Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, who has become the first world leader to address Ukrainian lawmakers since the start of Russia’s aggression in late February, said Ukraine had proved that military experts were “completely wrong”.
In a recorded speech, he also told the Verkhovna Rada that “the so-called irresistible force of Putin’s war machine has been broken over the force of Ukrainian patriotism.”
Russian soldiers “no longer have an excuse for not knowing what they are doing,” said the prime minister, surrounded by British and Ukrainian flags.
They are “committing war crimes” and “their atrocities appear wherever they are forced to retreat.”
Turning to Vladimir Putin, the British prime minister stressed that the war had exposed the “historical folly” of the Russian leader – “the giant mistake that only an autocrat can make.”
“When a leader rules out of fear, manipulates elections, imprisons critics,… – when there is no limit to his power – then he makes catastrophic mistakes,” Johnson said.
“A free media, the rule of law, free elections and strong parliaments like yours” are “the best protection against the dangers of arbitrary power,” he continued.
“The corpses of the Russian army that fill your fields and streets” are “monuments to his folly.”
