Former British Prime Minister Boris Johnson has ruled out Russian President Vladimir Putin ordering the use of nuclear weapons during the war in Ukraine and believes only a «madman» would be capable of such a thing.
«I don’t think he would do it, he would be crazy to do it,» Johnson said during an interview for Sky News, in which he also pointed out that in case Putin ended up putting his nuclear weaponry into action it would mean the «immediate resignation» of Russia «from the club of civilized nations.»
It would be a «total disaster» that would affect not only the battlefield, said Johnson, but also its economy as a whole, which would be frozen and Putin would end up losing «the tacit global acquiescence he has had» during all these years before starting the invasion of Ukraine.
«There is a lot of willingness to give Putin the benefit of the doubt. That will disappear the moment he does something like that,» Johnson assessed, referring to Latin American, South Asian or Sub-Saharan African countries. «He would also crucially lose the patronage of the Chinese,» he said.
«In his own country, I think it would unleash an absolutely hysterical reaction», said the former British Prime Minister, who warned not to seal any «dirty deal» with President Putin during a possible peace negotiation, such as pressuring Kiev to negotiate its territorial integrity, since that would encourage it to continue carrying out «more aggressions».
Finally, Johnson expressed his confidence that Ukraine will eventually prevail in this conflict and asked both the British and the rest of the international community to have «strategic patience» and to continue to support them.
