British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said Wednesday that peace talks between Russia and Ukraine are likely to fail because negotiating with Russian President Vladimir Putin was akin to dealing with “a crocodile when it’s got your leg in its jaws.”
“It is very hard to see how the Ukrainians can negotiate with Putin now, given his manifest lack of good faith,” Johnson said ahead of his trip to India to meet with his counterpart Prime Minister Narendra Modi. “[Putin’s] strategy, which is evident, is to try [to] engulf and capture as much of Ukraine as he can and perhaps to have some sort of negotiation from a position of strength.”
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Johnson said Britain, along with other Western leaders, including President Joe Biden, agreed on a call this week to continue to supply Ukraine with weapons, including artillery.
Putin’s forces have been expanding their assault across a 300-mile stretch in eastern Ukraine. The Russian leader announced Wednesday the test launch of a new intercontinental ballistic missile and warned nations such as the United States, Britain, Germany, and France to “think twice” before they “try to threaten our country.”
Johnson said it was clear Putin was trying to grab as much territory as he could to use as leverage in talks and warned the ex-KGB spy could launch another assault on the capital city of Kyiv. Johnson added that Putin could not be viewed as a “valid interlocutor” and said it was nearly impossible to negotiate with him.
“This is the difficulty that the Ukrainians face,” he said.
Putin ordered Russian forces to invade Ukraine on Feb. 24 in what he likely assumed would be a quick military victory. What he wasn’t prepared for was eight weeks of pushback and an outpouring of international support for Ukraine. Western leaders have slapped sanctions on Russia, Putin, his oligarch friends, and adult family members as punishment for his actions in Ukraine. As a result, Russia’s economy has taken a nosedive, and the country has been largely isolated from the rest of Europe.
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The war, and the punishment doled out in the form of sanctions, could erase two decades of economic, cultural, and technological advances that Moscow has made.
