Boris Johnson Sent To Texas To Lobby Republicans To Keep Arming Ukraine

Authored by Dave DeCamp via AntiWar.com,

Former Prime Minister Boris Johnson met with a group of Republicans in Texas on Monday to urge them to continue supporting Ukraine in its war with Russia, Politico reported.

The Center for European Policy Analysis (CEPA), a pro-Ukrainian think tank based in Washington, decided to enlist Johnson to push Republicans to support Ukraine as more and more GOP members have questioned the policy of flooding weapons into the country with no clear goal.

“I just urge you all to stick with it,” Johnson told a group of Texas Republicans in Dallas. “You are backing the right horse. Ukraine is going to win. They are going to defeat Putin.” While visiting Texas, Johnson also met with former President George W. Bush and Governor Greg Abbot.

Alina Polyakova, the chief executive of CEPA, said Johnson was enlisted because he is “very much seen as the architect of the Western policy” on Ukraine.

Johnson was a staunch backer of the West’s proxy war with Russia during his time in office and played an integral role in helping scuttle peace talks that we being held in the early days of the conflict. According to The Times (UK):

Boris Johnson put on a faux French accent to disparage President Macron when he met senior US Republicans in Texas to rally support for Ukraine.

The former prime minister, on his second visit to the US this year to convince skeptical American conservatives that it is worth spending billions of public money on the war, criticized the French president’s more equivocal approach to President Putin at a lunch in Dallas.

In April 2022, then-Prime Minister Johnson traveled to Kyiv and urged Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky not to negotiate with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

“I think it was my French friend and colleague Emmanuel Macron who said ‘Putin must not be humiliated’,” Johnson told the lunch in Dallas, adopting a French accent to mock the presidenthttps://t.co/uXPnejeXXz

— Times Politics (@timespolitics) May 24, 2023

According to a report from Ukrainska Pravda, Johnson also told Zelensky that even if Ukraine was ready to sign a deal with Russia, Kyiv’s Western backers were not. The report said Johnson’s visit was a crucial factor in Ukraine calling off a potential Zelensky-Putin meeting.

Johnson was only prime minister for a little over six months after Russia launched its invasion, but he visited Kyiv three times in that period and made the trip again after stepping down.