Putin's venture 'must fail' Boris Johnson's speech on Russia's invasion of Ukraine in full

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00:00Thank you, Mr Speaker. With your permission, I'll make a statement about the situation in Ukraine.

00:06Last night, President Putin flagrantly violated the Minsk peace agreements

00:11by recognising the supposed independence of the so-called People's Republics of Donetsk and Luhansk in eastern Ukraine.

00:20In a single inflammatory speech, he denied that Ukraine had any tradition of genuine statehood,

00:28claimed that it posed a direct threat to the security of Russia,

00:34and hurled numerous other false accusations and aspersions.

00:40Soon afterwards, the Kremlin announced that Russian troops would enter the breakaway regions under the guise of peacekeepers,

00:47and Russian tanks and armoured personnel carriers have since been spotted.

00:52The House should be in no doubt that the deployment of these forces in sovereign Ukrainian territory

00:58amounts to a renewed invasion of that country.

01:04And by denying Ukraine's legitimacy as a state and presenting its very existence as a mortal threat to Russia,

01:13Putin is establishing the pretext for a full-scale offensive.

01:17I think honourable members will struggle to contemplate how, in the year 2022,

01:27a national leader might calmly and deliberately plot the destruction of a peaceful neighbour.

01:36And yet the evidence of his own words suggests that is exactly what President Putin is doing.

01:42When I said on Saturday that his scheme to subvert and invade Ukraine was already in motion before our eyes,

01:50the events of the last 24 hours have, sadly, shown this to be true.

01:56We must now brace ourselves for the next possible stages of Putin's plan.

02:01The violent subversion of areas of eastern Ukraine by Russian operatives and their hirelings,

02:08followed by a general offensive by the nearly 200,000 Russian troops gathered on the frontiers at peak readiness to attack.

02:17If the worst happens, then a European nation of 44 million men, women and children

02:23would become the target of a full-scale war of aggression,

02:29waged without a shred of justification for the absurd and even mystical reasons that Putin described last night.

02:41Unless the situation changes, the best efforts of the United States, of this country, France, Germany and other allies

02:48to avoid conflict through patient diplomacy may be in vain.

02:56From the beginning, we have tried our utmost, we have all tried, to find a peaceful way through this crisis.

03:02On the 11th of February, my right honourable friend, the Defence Secretary and the Chief of the Defence Staff,

03:08Admiral Radikin, paid the first joint visit to Moscow by the holders of their offices

03:14since Churchill, who was also a Defence Minister at the time, travelled to Russia with General Allenbrook in 1944.

03:21They held over three hours of frank discussions with the Russian Defence Minister,

03:25General Shoigu, and the Chief of Staff, General Gerasimov,

03:29demonstrating how seriously we take Russia's security concerns,

03:33how much we respect her history,

03:37and how hard we are prepared to work to ensure peaceful coexistence.

03:41My right honourable friend, the Foreign Secretary, delivered the same messages

03:46when she met our Russian counterpart in Moscow on the 10th of February.

03:50I have spoken on a number of occasions to President Putin since his crisis began,

03:55so has President Biden, while President Macron and Chancellor Scholz have both visited Moscow.

04:03Together, we have explored every avenue and given Putin every opportunity

04:08to pursue his aims by negotiation and diplomacy.

04:12And I will tell the House, we will not give up.

04:15We will continue to seek a diplomatic solution until the last possible moment.

04:20But we have to face the possibility that none of our messages has been heeded,

04:27and that Putin is implacably determined to go further in subjugating and tormenting Ukraine.

04:35And it is because we suspected as much that the UK and our allies repeatedly sounded the alarm

04:42about a possible new invasion,

04:45and we disclosed much of what we knew about Russia's military build-up.

04:49Britain has done everything possible to help Ukraine to prepare for another onslaught,

04:53training 22,000 soldiers, supplying 2,000 anti-tank missiles,

04:58and providing £100 million for economic reform and energy independence.

05:02We will now guarantee up to $500 million of development bank financing.

05:08I travelled to Kiev to meet President Zelensky on the 1st of February.

05:13I saw him again in Munich the weekend.

05:17I spoke to him again last night, soon after President Putin's speech,

05:23to assure him, as I'm sure the whole House would agree,

05:28was the right thing to do.

05:29I assured him of Britain's unwavering support for Ukraine's sovereignty and territorial integrity.

05:38And now the UK and our allies will begin to impose the sanctions on Russia that we have already prepared,

05:48using the new and unprecedented powers granted by this House

05:51to sanction Russian individuals and entities of strategic importance to the Kremlin.

05:56Today, the UK is sanctioning the following five Russian banks.

06:02Rossiya, IS Bank, General Bank, Promzyaz Bank and the Black Sea Bank.

06:08And we are sanctioning three very high net worth individuals,

06:13Gennady Timchenko, Boris Rottenberg and Igor Rottenberg.

06:17Any assets they hold in the UK will be frozen.

06:22The individuals concerned will be banned from travelling here.

06:26And we will prohibit all UK individuals and entities from having any dealings with them.

06:32This is the first tranche, the first barrage of what we are prepared to do.

06:40And we hold further sanctions at readiness to be deployed alongside the United States and the European Union

06:47if the situation escalates still further.

06:51Last night, our diplomats joined an emergency meeting of the UN Security Council

06:56and we will raise the situation in the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe.

07:02And let me emphasise what I believe unites every member of this House with equal determination.

07:10The resolve of the United Kingdom to defend our NATO allies is absolute and immovable.

07:18We have already doubled the size of our deployment in Estonia, where the British Army leads NATO's battle group.

07:26And when I met President Levitz of Latvia and Prime Minister Callas of Estonia in Munich on Saturday,

07:32I told them that we would be willing to send more British forces to help protect our allies if NATO makes such a request.

07:41We cannot tell what will happen in the days ahead.

07:46But, Mr Speaker, we should steel ourselves for a protracted crisis.

07:53The United Kingdom will meet this challenge side by side with our allies,

07:58determined that we will not allow Putin to drag our continent back into a Hobbesian state of nature

08:05where aggression pays and might is right.

08:08And it is precisely because the states are so high that Putin's venture in Ukraine must fail.

08:20Must ultimately fail and must be seen to fail.

08:26That will require the perseverance and the unity and the resolve of the entire Western Alliance.

08:34And Britain and the UK will do everything possible to ensure that that unity is maintained.

08:40And now our thoughts should turn to our valiant Ukrainian friends

08:48who threaten no one, who ask for nothing except to live in peace and freedom.

08:56We will keep faith with them in the critical days that lie ahead.

09:02And whatever happens, Mr Speaker, Britain will not waver in our resolve.

09:09And I commend this statement to the House.

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