LONDON — Boris Johnson urged European leaders not to take Donald Trump’s blaming of the Ukrainians for their country’s own invasion too literally.
Trump on Tuesday mocked Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy as a poor negotiator and “grossly incompetent,” inaccurately questioned his poll ratings, and appeared to point the finger at Kyiv for Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022.
It followed the U.S. and Russia starting direct talks on ending the war — without Ukraine’s involvement.
Johnson, the former British prime minister who has been a staunch ally of Ukraine while also praising Trump, leapt to the U.S. president’s defense Wednesday. He challenged some of Trump’s latest claims — but said European nations should see them as part of a negotiating gambit rather than a serious position.
Writing on X, Johnson said: “When are we Europeans going to stop being scandalised about Donald Trump and start helping him to end this war?
“Of course Ukraine didn’t start the war. You might as well say that America attacked Japan at Pearl Harbor.
“Of course a country undergoing a violent invasion should not be staging elections. There was no general election in the UK from 1935 to 1945. Of course Zelenskyy’s ratings are not 4 percent. They are actually about the same as Trump’s.”
But the former PM added: “Trump’s statements are not intended to be historically accurate but to shock Europeans into action.”
Since leaving office in 2022, Johnson has lobbied top Republicans to stay the course in their support for Ukraine. He dined with Trump to discuss Ukraine and met the U.S. president at the Republican National Convention.
Last week he accused European leaders of “headless chicken-ism” in response to the Russia-U.S. talks and urged them to “man up and step up” in the latest stage of the conflict.
Johnson on Wednesday argued that Trump’s intervention should prompt pan-European action on using frozen Russian assets “to pay Ukraine and compensate the U.S. for its support.”
He asked: “Why is Europe preventing the unfreezing of Putin’s cash?”
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