You were accusing redalways of some sort of agenda for this statement:
“I’m struggling to comprehend this, what was Johnson supposed to have done that made him so pivotal?”
which was a reaction to this hyperbolic statement:
“The first phase (of 3 so far) was stopped, really, on day 4 when the blitzkrieg attack in the North to try and take out Mr Zelensky, from whom we just heard, and all his government, that was prevented; and the responsibility for that, by the way, let’s be quite clear, lay above all with one man, and that is our Prime Minister.”
So, Zelenskiy can be (rightly) appreciative of the role Johnson has played in supporting Ukraine, but that doesn’t place BoJo turning back the Russian paratroopers back at the Antonov airport on February 26, does it? That sort of sounds like crediting Roosevelt’s rhetorical support for Britain in September 1940 as the real reason for victory in the Battle of Britain, with Churchill, the RAF, radar, etc., secondary causes in what was essentially an American victory. That sounds like some blend of stupid and insulting, I should think.
You were attacking redalways for having difficulty believing the claim that the credit for stopping the Russian drive on Kiev belongs to Johnson, ahead of that list I cited. But you decided that because Zelensky has given Johnson a medal, redalways is wrong.
I imagine the main reason Prins says this is due to Operation Orbital, that Johnson massively expanded, and the supply of military equipment to Ukraine well in advance of Russia’s invasion (which has since ramped up significantly). Hence why Zelensky has spoken of Johnson in such complimentary terms, as has Ukraine’s defence minister (from wiki),
Ukrainian Defence Minister Oleksii Reznikov praised the UK’s efforts to support Ukraine during an official visit to the UK on 20 March 2022. He stated: “We greatly appreciate that this year, Britain was the first to provide us with serious weapons that have increased our defence capabilities. Your role is special, and your courage and your spirit are in stark contrast with the passivity of some other countries.”
I do think Johnson and the UK deserve enormous praise for their role. In what I suspect may not otherwise be a kind historical treatment, Johnson’s handling of the Ukraine situation will stand out as his very best legacy. But equally, the US ramped up material delivery from November 2021, was providing intelligence, was at least as strident about denouncing the Russian build-up, and so on. It also began training Ukrainian forces in 2015. Operation Orbital began when Cameron was PM, it was likely critical in changing the Ukrainian armed forces, but it was a program of the British state before Johnson’s time in charge. Operation Unifier was running in parallel, it would seem laughable to allocate any credit to Trudeau for the first 3 days of Ukrainian resistance.
What is so fundamentally offensive about Prins’ desperate need to lionize Johnson is that in considering the early stages of the Ukraine war, it can only be at the expense of Zelensky. He is the genuinely Churchillian figure who galvanized Ukrainian will to resist that was largely written off in the West. To suggest that Johnson’s contribution was definitive over the first three days seems laughably solipsistic, whatever weapons are supplied, they don’t fire themselves.
No problem with this, Johnson deserves a lot of credic, no doubt. And I have also praised him previously. But the idea that he alone was the bulwark against the Russians in the first 3 days of the war seems more than a bit absurd to me and also quite disrespectful.
Prins is doing the verbal equivalent of fellating Johnson live, givin him credit that he absolutely does not deserve, which is highly relevant to this thread because this feeds the narrative that no one else could have or would have done as much to support Ukraine, which is a patent lie.
As to why Zelensky might have awarded him that medal, perhaps it’s because he knows that feeding the man-child’s ego will help ensure the continued support while he’s in office, before the Russian backers of the Conservative Party remind them who pays the bills?
I’m sure that Johnson isn’t the only person who could have provided Ukraine such fulsome support. It just so happens that he’s the world leader that led the charge, while many others did comparatively little.
I would argue that the UK government has played an incredibly crucial part when it comes to solidifying support and unifying other European countries behind it. Then you have intelligence sharing early in the war in addition to that.
So Johnson does deserve a lot of credit I would argue. The question imo is just how much and how irreplacable Johnson was.
My opinion anyway.
I’d argue that most of that intelligence was primarily from US sources and it has been Biden that has largely solidified support through NATO.
Michael Heseltine said of Johnson that he is “a man who waits to see which way the crowd is running and then dashes in front and says ‘follow me’…”
He has done that over Ukraine. That’s not to say that the support hasn’t been there. There has been direct UK support for Ukraine going back to David Cameron although the lead nation has actually been Canada.
As far as UK support for Ukraine is concerned this comes through the foreign office and they will be working very closely with their allies. Prime Ministers don’t just make up policy on the hoof - or at least they shouldn’t.
I wouldn’t underestimate how important Johnson and the UK have been to allowing Biden the domestic political cover to take that position. You are right that most of the intel was American, but within NATO it has been very useful for Biden to support UK positions rather than vice versa.
I think they have been giving reasonable cover for quite a few of the other NATO leaders. Poland and Lithuania in particular have to be very careful about what they are actually doing and what they are seen to be doing.
I’m not so sure. Certainly my understanding was that the UK had better intelligence on Russia than the US although maybe that’s degraded since Skripal?
The majority of the really useful intelligence was satellite-gathered. Ukraine was getting detailed troop concentration breakdowns that showed what the primary axes of advance were going to be.
All of the European countries have claimed for about 20 years to have better ‘human intelligence’ on Russian than the US. I would say only the UK could possibly maintain that claim now, for the rest it has been exposed as utter nonsense. The French and Germans were assuring the world Russia wasn’t going to attack as late as February 23.