Yet Hans H. Luik found Johnson notable as the first Western leader to visit Kyiv during Vladimir Putin’s aggression. Johnson distanced himself from the indecisive leaders of Germany, France, and the US, pledging military support to Volodymyr Zelensky.
In an interview with Delfi, Johnson recalled how even British officials tried to block the delivery of anti-tank missiles to Ukraine before the war. Leaders like him may have played a decisive role in shaping the fate of the Baltic States.
Johnson also revealed in his memoirs that he had once considered deploying the British Navy to the Netherlands to recover AstraZeneca vaccines purchased by Britain but held up in Europe. This issue, however, went unaddressed due to time constraints.
– Dear friends, I am your publisher Hans Luik. And to open this year’s series of political interviews, I offer you a conversation with the Right Honourable Boris Johnson. Welcome!
– Hello! Thank you very much and thank you for inviting me! I am delighted to be here!
– Warm greetings from the "Baltic United Kingdom!"
– Tallinn is a fantastic place, a wonderful place. I have often been to Tallinn and elsewhere in Estonia. We have fantastic relations with Estonia. I can assure you of that, especially our defence relations.
– Let me start with a question that is not about your problems with the party and COVID-19. Australian, New Zealand and British interviewers have already given you a hard time about these scandals. From our point of view, these are just trivial matters compared to your...
– I think they were quite, quite pathetic attacks, you know. I have said all I have to say about it in my book. I believe the whole thing was a farce. But whatever.
– Yes, your book is about the memoirs of the Great Brexit Man, who was stabbed in the back by figures in his own Conservative Party.
– Well, I know very well that they paid the price for it later. They sowed the wind and are now reaping the storm.
– Would you be so kind as to tell me about the events of April 8th and 9th 2022, the beginning of the war, when you secretly made your very brave and inspiring trip to Kiev to support President Zelensky?
– Let me say that a lot of nonsense has been said about that trip, especially about the Kremlin, which continues to lie and spread all kinds of nonsense. It must be remembered that at that time the Russian occupiers still controlled a very significant part of the territory of Ukraine. The Russians were only 30 kilometers from Kiev. And although the Ukrainians had beaten them back from Kiev with extraordinary heroism, the war could clearly have gone either way. There was no doubt that in April 2022, Putin’s goal was still to conquer all of Ukraine. In fact, I believe he still wants to. And people are now repeating a huge lie, saying that the Ukrainians could have made a deal then. What a huge lie!
It would have been completely unthinkable at that time to agree that the Russians would keep the occupied Ukrainian regions. I don’t think any Ukrainian leader, Zelensky included, could have made such a deal. It is not true that there was a readiness in Istanbul or anywhere else for some kind of agreement that would have ended the war. That is simply not true. The Ukrainians had nothing to agree to, because the Russians wanted to maintain their positions and make Ukraine their vassal state. They demanded eternal neutrality for Ukraine and Moscow’s political control over Ukraine. After seeing the Butcha and other massacres, no Ukrainian could possibly agree to such an agreement.
I had no intention of obstructing diplomatic initiatives in any way. Naturally not. We were not directly involved in the Russian-Ukrainian negotiations. All I did was say what I deeply believed: that if the Ukrainians decided to fight on heroically and if they wanted to defend their rights to the entire borders of Ukraine in 1991, then the policy of the British government was to support them. Although we did not send ground troops to Ukraine, and although there were limitations on what we could do at the time – we had not yet delivered many of the weapons that we later gave to the Ukrainians – I simply wanted to tell Zelensky in Kiev that we admired what he had done and that we were with him. I also wanted to highlight, with my personal presence, that the Ukrainians had accomplished something incredible – they had faced the second-largest army in the world, which had already arrived within a few kilometres of their capital, and had beaten back the enemy. The only way to express this was to go to Kiev and take a walk with Volodymyr. That was the reason I made the quick trip. It was quite funny, because we wanted to keep the whole visit a secret for security reasons. But our wonderful Ukrainian friends were obviously very keen to show my presence in public. I actually didn’t mind – it was great. So they showed us how we walked around Kiev.
– You left your phone and safety notes behind in England.
– Yes, I left them, I left them, deliberately.
– You know, I would like to know the details, because on a very bad day, which may or may not come, we may be in a position here where we expect the same brave support from you or from any other British Prime Minister.
– You have many guarantees that you need.
– In your book you write that you took a step away from the European format, where the French and Germans only wanted to talk to Putin. The decisive stance of the British gave us a huge amount of hope in the Baltics.
Did you coordinate your actions with the Yankees?
– No, not during the April 9 trip. I think we told them we were going. I think we just informed them as is good manners. But no, there was no coordination. But you know, the important thing that you just raised – which is the big difference between Estonia and the Baltics and Ukraine.
– We have an "umbrella".
– You’re right, you have an "umbrella" over your head. You have an "umbrella". It would be a tragedy if we didn’t, let’s be honest.
I don’t think it was realistic for the Ukrainians at that time to expect NATO membership in the near future, right? I mean before the invasion, right? The reality was that the French were very opposed to it. The Germans were very opposed to it. Not to mention the Hungarians or others. And the Americans were not at all sure about it. It was not on the international agenda. A NATO invitation to Ukraine simply could not happen.
But the paradox is that Putin’s invasion, his barbaric decision to do this, has now made it, in my opinion, a moral and strategic imperative. The problem is that even Estonia, and certainly not Britain, is not actively talking about this issue at the moment. I don’t hear... you know, I follow the news a little bit, I listen to what people are saying, but I don’t hear anyone saying that when this catastrophe is over, the solution has to be Ukraine’s membership in NATO. People have stopped talking about it. And I think that’s a big, big loss, because the West is retreating again.
We have to be much more forceful. We are not going to solve the Ukraine problem without Article 5 guarantees or long-term NATO membership. We can find short-term solutions, temporary solutions, but the goal has to remain NATO.
The problem is that even Estonia, and certainly not Britain, is not actively talking about this issue at the moment. I don’t hear... you know, I follow the news a little bit, I listen to what people are saying, but I don’t hear anyone saying that when this catastrophe is over, the solution has to be Ukraine’s membership in NATO. People have stopped talking about it. And I think that’s a big, big loss, because the West is retreating again.
– Your then Defence Secretary Ben Wallace just told Rory Stewart, who you know – the Conservative – on the well-known British show "The Rest is Politics", that when you very kindly gave Ukraine NLAW anti-tank missiles before the war…
– Yes.
– So Defence Secretary Ben Wallace had to coordinate this move with the United States. Why is that? The NLAW is a British product.
– If I remember correctly, the problem was not with the United States.
I think we needed to do some cooperation with our Swedish friends, who were involved in the production of the missiles and who later joined NATO – Sweden joining is another sign of how wrong Putin is doing things. But don’t forget that when it comes to weapons, the US Javelins were the first to be sent to Ukraine. I am very proud that we sent the NLAW missiles, but the Javelins were the first.
But our weapons arrived in Ukraine very slowly, if I remember correctly, around January 10th or 15th or 16th, something like that. You know, the missiles were really delayed until almost the beginning of the invasion. We didn’t know what was going on, we were very worried about the situation. I have to be honest with you – the problem was not with the Americans with the permission to send the NLAW missiles. The problem was with the British system itself – our officials in the Foreign Office and elsewhere, who just thought, and they made the same stupid argument, you know... I’m not saying they were stupid, but I think their opposition was wrong.
What I emphasize, as I mention in my book "Unleashed" – I had to write in the margin of the paper four times: "You know, I’ve already decided this."
Yes, when you’re a prime minister and you see something coming to your desk over and over again, you know that the system is trying to stop you. Fortunately, we finally got through in time, thank God.
This helped to break the taboo in Europe about sending lethal weapons to Ukraine. Tanks, planes followed, and a huge amount of equipment is now arriving in Ukraine, thank God. But more is needed.
Our weapons arrived in Ukraine very slowly, if I remember correctly, around January 10th or 15th or 16th, something like that. The missiles were really delayed until almost the beginning of the invasion. We didn’t know what was going on, we were very worried about the situation. [...] The problem was with the British system itself – our officials in the Foreign Office and elsewhere, who just thought, and they made the same stupid argument. I’m not saying they were stupid, but I think their opposition was wrong.
– There is something very characteristic about the German approach, and I have only read it once before in the US media, perhaps in The Atlantic. You write in your memoirs – at the moment of crisis, one of Olaf Scholz’s top advisers confidently told us: "What if the Ukrainians can’t stand up to the Russians? What if they collapse quickly?" Did the Germans hope that the problem would quickly fall off their shoulders?
– Yes, I’m afraid I have to admit that he meant it this way, that... I think Scholz and this honorable man were trying save lives. And from his perspective, I think he meant something like: "Look. The world is on the brink of total catastrophe. What is the worst outcome?" And you know, I’m afraid that many people in Germany are still asking this question. Would it be worse if the Ukrainians fought and lost hundreds of thousands of lives, and the Russians also lost hundreds of thousands of lives? Or would it be worse if a sovereign state were destroyed overnight, Putin succeeded and enslaved Ukraine? He tried to ask us this question, very honestly: "Realistically, humanly, which is worse?"
– Like the French in World War II surrendering the city of Paris without a fight.
– Yes, absolutely. Or something like that. There are many unpleasant historical parallels with the policy of appeasement, and I knew that the right answer could only be something that the Ukrainians themselves would decide, right? And although I support the Ukrainians passionately, no one could be more Ukrainian than the Ukrainians themselves. If they want to make a deal with Putin, that’s up to them. But they don’t want to, they really, really don’t want to.
– Let me describe a situation today that is perhaps similar to this, but now with a new Prime Minister in London. You have expressed dissatisfaction that Keir Starmer is not allowing the Ukrainian armed forces to attack Russian territory with British Storm Shadow missiles. What is behind this? Is it the British position themselves or the coalition or who?
Could this situation happen to us too, for example, if we see that things are going really badly? I mean, the Russians are already targeting us from their airfields here in the St. Petersburg region and elsewhere. And we are not allowed to attack their launchers with British or American missiles, but we ourselves do not produce missiles here in the Baltics. Could such a restriction be extended in a similar way to NATO members, including us?
– No. I think your situation is quite different. You are, thank God, a member of NATO, like us. You know that there are British troops at the Estonian Tapa base, and our commitment to protecting you is absolutely unwavering. You have to be able to do whatever you need to do to protect yourself, and Britain fully supports that. So it is a different situation, and that is the tragedy of Ukraine, because they are not yet in NATO. And that is precisely why we suffer from this chronic uncertainty about the status of Ukraine. What really drives me now is the fact that I lost power two and a half or three years ago, and it drives me crazy, because I look at the situation and I think that the West, NATO, Britain, Estonia – what we should do with the United States - is to develop a plan for Ukraine to win, a roadmap. We should clearly define what success means.
We underestimate the Ukrainians too much. They have achieved incredible things. And all I’m saying is that I agree – the news from the front is, of course, devastating and depressing. But that doesn’t mean that the achievements of the Ukrainians aren’t extraordinary. They are extraordinary.
– You presented your plan in the Daily Mail in the summer.
– But the problem is that some of the concepts that I think are necessary, such as NATO membership, no one is ready to discuss at the moment. And I think that is the problem. It seems that we are prepared to do enough to prevent Ukraine from losing, but not enough to ensure that Ukraine wins.
You mentioned the example of using Storm Shadow missiles and other weapons against Russian bases. We are not prepared to do enough to ensure that Ukraine wins. But Ukraine can win. I believe that they will win. It is absolutely amazing how successful they have been. When I think back to my visit to Kiev in April 2022, the Ukrainians were able to push the Russians out of even more territory. They launched an amazing invasion of Kursk Oblast, right into Russian territory.
There is a kind of superstitious awe of Russian military prowess that goes back to World War II. People forget that a lot of that was actually based on Ukrainian military achievements. In fact, the success of the Soviet Union was largely due to Ukrainian contributions. But despite that, Putin still hasn’t been able to take Pokrovsky, for example, right? They are losing a huge number of people.
We underestimate the Ukrainians too much. They have achieved incredible things. And all I’m saying is that I agree with you – the news from the front is, of course, devastating and depressing. But that doesn’t mean that the achievements of the Ukrainians aren’t extraordinary. They are extraordinary. And we should always remember that first, not this stupid talk about how Russia is destined to win this war. Russia is not destined to win.
– Do you know what is being discussed in the House of Commons in London today?
– I have no idea.
– I can tell you, today the British House of Commons is discussing one point that was missing from your peace plan of July last year. They are discussing the use of the reserves of the Russian Central Bank for reparations to Ukraine.
– No, that was in my text. Yes, 300 billion (Delfi editorial note: Johnson’s peace plan does not include a compensation point).
– Will it happen? Were these also part of the discussions of the international coalition, which could have taken place even before Putin’s attack? Because the sanctions also included Switzerland, and very appropriately Norway and Japan. You will not find more stable currencies than the currencies of Europe, the USA, the UK and their countries. Did you discuss blocking Russian reserves before the war started?
– Yes, all sorts of sanctions packages were discussed before the war. And I think they should have been implemented before the war started. But I remember that there was a great reluctance, especially with Olaf Scholz and Germany, to do something that would have prevented the invasion, and that was a huge mistake. I think we should have acted earlier. Olaf’s argument at the time was that we need to maintain strategic ambiguity about what we are doing.
But as for the 300 billion, I think that is one of the most fruitful ideas. We have three main things that we need to do: weapons, money and a long-term political vision. We have discussed a long-term political vision, NATO and weapons. And I think that European troops, British and Estonian troops, should be in Ukraine to provide security if we cannot bring Ukraine into NATO immediately. But using Russian money is an obvious necessity, especially for Donald Trump.
In a few days we will have a new administration in the White House. And their biggest concern, quite rightly, is that countries are not spending enough on defense. Estonia stands out – I think almost 4% of your GDP goes to defense. But that’s still a pretty small amount compared to the budgets of the United States or even the United Kingdom. European NATO countries are not spending enough. And until we get serious, I don’t see how we can convince the Trump administration to do whatever it takes to help Ukraine.
We need to act quickly, and these 300 billion will help us. I don’t understand how Germany can just sit there and refuse to spend enough on defense, demand that Trump help Ukraine, and say that they don’t want to send the frozen Russian 300 billion to Ukraine. That’s absurd.
I remember that there was a great reluctance, especially with Olaf Scholz and Germany, to do something that would have prevented the invasion, and that was a huge mistake. I think we should have acted earlier. Olaf’s argument at the time was that we need to maintain strategic ambiguity about what we are doing.
– But Boris, you’re the one in the studio today who should know the answers. I don’t know what the Germans are thinking. But you’ve talked to them privately. So what do they think? Are they afraid, for example, that Donald Trump will pull the US nuclear umbrella over their country and Germany will be left alone? That’s what Angela Merkel said after her famous meeting with Donald Trump: "Wir sind allein – we are now alone."?
– No, I don’t think so.. I think that’s a misunderstanding of Trump. I think Trump is a negotiator who is fed up with the Europeans taking advantage of the Americans from his perspective, and he wants the Europeans to take more responsibility and do more. I think what Britain and Estonia should do – and one of the great advantages of our position is that our positions are so closely aligned – is that we should fight for these things together and act on them at the same time.
I think Trump is a negotiator who is fed up with the Europeans taking advantage of the Americans from his perspective, and he wants the Europeans to take more responsibility and do more.
– Why have you written that if you, Boris, had been re-elected as British Prime Minister in the 2020 election, you would have been able to prevent this nasty Putin aggression against Ukraine? Did you have any ideas about that?
– I probably called for Ukraine to be a member of NATO, and I think that was what was needed. The problem with Ukraine is that our approach to this border country has been chronically ambiguous. What is it? Is Ukraine part of the West or is it part of the Russian sphere of influence? And I think the most important thing we need to get across to Putin is that Russia is no longer an empire and that’s all over.
You know, we once had an empire, absolutely true. I mean, our viewers know that. We had an empire that was seven times the size of the Roman Empire. It was the largest empire in the history of the world. There’s practically nothing left of it today. Keir Starmer could even give away the Chagos Islands, damn it, which he doesn’t need to do and which is a disaster. But we’re happy with our post-imperialist role. You don’t have to control other countries. If you love someone, let them go!
What Putin is doing is archaic and barbaric, and he needs to understand that Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania – none of those countries are part of the Russian empire anymore, and the same goes for Ukraine. It’s over. Over, over, over. There’s no more empire, Vladimir, you f***ing idiot! Excuse my language, okay? But that’s how it is.
– Boris, the big Brexit man – tell me, why didn’t you tolerate us in your country? I mean, maybe too many of us, the Balts, Lithuanians, Poles, moved to your country? I don’t think the British had anything against people from former colonies, like Pakistanis, South Africans or Afghan immigrants. Maybe the fault was David Cameron’s government, during which England made an exception in the European Union and allowed unlimited young students and workers from the new Eastern European EU member states. You wonder in your book how many other European citizens came to you.
– I wouldn’t say!
What Putin is doing is archaic and barbaric, and he needs to understand that Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania – none of those countries are part of the Russian empire anymore, and the same goes for Ukraine. It’s over. Over, over, over. There’s no more empire, Vladimir, you f***ing idiot!
– You are very modest in promoting your book, so I’ll do it for you. You write in your book that there were more EU citizens in the UK than expected. We thought there were 3 million, but it turned out there were 5 million living in the UK. My daughter Epp was among them, by the way.
– It could have been rock and roll. Unfortunately, we have to end this conversation soon, but what I would say is that it is obviously better to be a country where people want to come and live than a country where people want to escape. You know, I think of a lot of my childhood memories when people wanted to leave parts of Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union and come to live in the West – and for very good reasons. People still want to come to Britain in principle.
But unfortunately, today, for the first time since the 1970s, under this terrible Labour government, we are seeing wealth-creating and talented people fleeing Britain, fleeing our tax system. We haven’t seen that for a very long time. Now we have an immigration problem, and then an emigration problem!
As for the European numbers, yes, look, I am a child of immigrants. But I also have a lot of British ancestors.
And I am proud of that, I am proud of that, I am proud of that. I think the public wants control and what they can’t stand is the feeling that politicians just can’t control the bills. They’ve been too big lately. I think after COVID – during COVID, immigration basically collapsed, right? And you know, we saw a lot of outflows at first, but after COVID, a lot more people came in than we expected. And in a way that was good, because the economy needed a lot of workers. But it was still too much. Thanks to Brexit, we can control it.
– Can’t, your immigration is out of control, says the new Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch today.
– Legally, no, no, sorry. I have to emphasize that point. Legally, we can control immigration, right? We have the right to decide how many people come into our country.
– Your plan to fly immigrants to Rwanda was shelved, right?
– That plan was about illegal immigrants, right. That’s the difference. And as you remember, the UK was completely forbidden by EU rules to legally control the movement of 580 million EU citizens - or whatever - maybe 540 million, I don’t remember exactly - who could come to the UK completely freely. You mentioned the numbers in relation to the new EU countries in the 1990s and early 2000s. They were very large. And you know, I think there were a lot of good things about that, but there were also aspects that made people angry. I think the most important thing for the public now is control. That’s one of the reasons why the UK is not going back to the EU, by the way. But I hope that the British will continue to be a leader on European issues, for example on Ukraine.
– I’m going to show you two seconds of a very funny video where Nigel Farage threw a big party at his Reform UK event. He claims that his party will become the new British Conservative Party. Listen, Farage’s foul language shows where this guy is hoping for support. By the way, yesterday Elon Musk took down this guy’s image with a tweet. Did you read it?
– I saw it. Well, I have to thank you for your kindness now. My team is already dragging me to the next meeting.
– Give me some more time if you run for politics again.
– Sure.
– Because the left is getting a hard time everywhere – in Canada, in Germany, so...
– I think that’s absolutely true. The misfortune of Britain right now is that the right wing is divided in two. That’s a problem. But that’s another topic. Thank you very much!