Boris Johnson – 2022 Press Conference on His Second Visit to Kyiv

The press conference with Boris Johnson, the Prime Minister, on 17 June 2022.

Thank you for having me. It’s great to be back here again in Kyiv and to see you, but also to see how life is coming back to the streets, to the cafes, to the restaurants.

It’s much livelier than it was just a few weeks ago when you and I went on our impromptu walk about, Volodymyr, and that’s a very positive thing. It’s good to see visitors, let me put it this way from other European countries, coming to Kyiv.

But we’ve got to face the fact that only a couple of hours away a barbaric assault continues on entirely innocent people.

Towns and villages are being reduced to rubble.

And as you rightly say, Volodymyr, we continue to see the deliberate targeting of civilians – what is unquestionably a war crime.

And in a hideous echo of the past, the illegal deportation of people that the Russian forces believe are insufficiently sympathetic to Putin’s aggression and in these circumstances, we can only once again salute the heroism of the Ukrainian forces, the bravery of your armed forces.

In these circumstances, Volodymyr, I completely understand why you and your people can make no compromise with Putin.

Because if Ukraine is suffering, if Ukrainian troops are suffering, then I have to tell you that all the evidence is that Putin’s troops are under acute pressure themselves and they are taking heavy casualties.

Their expenditure of munitions, of shells and other weaponry is colossal.

And after our 114 days of attack on Ukraine, they have still not achieved the objectives they set out for the first week.

So Volodymyr, we are here once again, to underline that we are with you to give you the strategic endurance that you will need and we are going to continue to help intensify the sanctions on Putin’s regime.

We’re going to do everything we can to continue to strengthen the diplomatic coalition around the world for Ukraine.

And I completely understand and sympathise with the need for continued financial support for Ukraine.

We’re going to work together to liberate the grain, as you rightly say that he’s being held hostage right now by Putin, depriving people around the world of the food that they need.

And of course, we will continue, as we have from the beginning, to provide the military equipment, the training that may be necessary to go with that with that new equipment, so that you – the Ukrainian people, the Ukrainian Armed Forces, will be able to do what I believe Ukrainians yearn to do and that is to expel the aggressor from Ukraine.

And that will be the moment for talks about the future.

And it will be in that context of a free Ukraine that we and other countries will be making the security commitments and guarantees that we’ve we discussed so often.

And we will work together with you and with our partners to rebuild your wonderful country for the benefit of Ukrainians and I might say, for the benefit of the whole of the global economy.

Thank you for having me to Kyiv again. Always wonderful to be here. Slava Ukraini.