Former British Prime Minister Boris Johnson on Wednesday told a Washington, D.C., think tank audience that it's a "vital interest of the U.S. and the whole West to ensure that [Russian President Vladimir] Putin loses in Ukraine" for several reasons, not the least of which concerns China.
Johnson appeared at the Atlantic Council to make a brief speech and engage in discussion with the organization’s senior director, former Ambassador John Herbst, about the Russia-Ukraine war.
The former prime minister said Ukraine's victory is vital to help save NATO members from spending money and arms to protect neighboring countries for years to come, and to help dissuade China from seeking to invade nations such as Taiwan.
"Don't forget the message that Putin's success would send to China," Johnson said during the discussion. "I mean, this is a dry run for [Chinese President] Xi Jinping.
"There’s a very good reason why Beijing decided to greenlight his appalling operation, or to acquiesce in it. They want to see how it will go because they, the Chinese, have objectives of their own. Do we want that to happen? Absolutely, emphatically not. That’s why we have to stand up to Putin now."
Johnson said that "once this war is done, and once the Ukrainians have won," President Volodymyr Zelenskyy's country should be admitted to both NATO and the European Union.
"I've now come to the conclusion that Putin has demolished any objections to Ukrainian membership [in NATO]," Johnson said. "If the objection was that we were going to provoke Russian aggression, well that is transparently absurd.
"Russian aggression has followed our failure to admit Ukraine into NATO. Not having Ukraine in NATO produced the worst war in Europe for 80 years."
Despite Putin’s actions, Johnson said the West should not be promoting regime change in Russia.
"The tragedy is, the Russian people, if we start to talk about removing the ruler of Russia, then the Russian people will think, This is really what's it all about. It's an anti-Russia thing. They want to get rid of our leader," he said.
"That is not our focus. We should not be talking about regime change in Moscow ... we should not be talking about any impacts on the Kremlin whatever. That is not what is at stake here. What is at stake is an innocent people suffering and our ability to alleviate that suffering now."
Johnson began with a brief speech in which he went to great length to thank the U.S. for its arms and financial support to Ukraine because, without it, Putin "would have taken Kyiv in the blitzkrieg that he planned.”
Later during the discussion, Johnson seemed to disagree that modern planes would be too complicated for Ukrainian pilots to navigate.
"I'm told they need planes," said Johnson, who then mentioned that Polish pilots in World War II quickly figured out how to fly British planes.
"I don't think it would take the Ukrainians very long to work out how to use F-16s or Typhoons or whatever we have to give them."
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