British Troops May Be Deployed to Ukraine if Trump Cuts Support – Boris Johnson

Boris Johnson has warned that Britain may be forced to send troops to Ukraine if Donald Trump reduces funding for the war-torn country when he becomes president.

In an interview with GB News, the former UK prime minister expressed concerns that if Russia gains the upper hand in the conflict, the UK might need to do more to defend Kyiv.

Johnson criticized some pro-Putin figures within the Republican Party for their “bonkers” views on the war and emphasized that the significant financial support provided by the US and its allies was not only for Ukraine’s defense but also as an investment to counter future expansionism by Russia and China.

He suggested that this support could help prevent the need for the UK to deploy ground troops.

“If Ukraine goes down, then we face an even bigger threat on our borders, the borders of the European continent wherever the democracies butt up against Russia,” he said.

“So, it’ll be the Baltic states. It’ll be in Georgia. You’ll see the impact of a Ukrainian defeat in the Pacific theatre. You’ll see it in the South China Sea.

“What I’m saying is for people watching, thinking ‘why are we supporting the Ukrainians?’

“It’s because otherwise our collective security will be really degraded by a resurgent Russia threatening all sorts of parts of Europe, and we will then have to pay to send British troops to help defend Ukraine.”

“There’s a front of the Republican Party, quite a lot of them actually, who take the wrong line on Ukraine and who are, frankly, a bit entranced by Vladimir Putin and they have a kind of weird sort of fanboy thing about Putin,” he said.

“You know, taking his shirt off. And it’s creepy, It’s bonkers, it’s wrong. He’s listening to some of those people… he’s hearing all that.

“On the other hand, this is the same Trump who made a huge difference to the fortunes of Ukraine when he authorised the supply of the Javelin shoulder-launched anti-tank weapons.

“If Trump hadn’t done that, then the battle for Kyiv might have been very, very different.”

The former Conservative leader pointed out that Donald Trump won the election largely based on his focus on the economy.

“A lot of people looked back to the time of Donald Trump and remembered that things were not only stable, but also quite prosperous and he had a clear and incredible economic message about growth, about tax cuts, about deregulation,” he said.

Johnson expressed support for the Republican plan to deport illegal immigrants, stating, “I agree, and I looked at that and thought we should.”

“We’ll see how he gets on because, be in no doubt, the lawyers will be all over it, as they were all over our various projects.

“It’s like I said in April 2022, when I launched the Rwanda scheme, you’ve got to get the legal ducks in a row. And I said to the people, I said to the country that when we launched, that it would only work if we could get the lawyers to back down.

“We live under the rule of law, and we try to protect human rights, but sometimes that protection of rights is done in such a way as to be, I think, unreasonable and against the clear manifesto commitments that the Government has.”