Boris Johnson: Ukraine must join Nato for sake of long-term peace

Boris Johnson has called for Ukraine to be admitted to Nato and launched a thinly veiled attack on Germany and the US over the failed deal to donate tanks, after a return to Ukraine this week.

The former prime minister, who is under pressure over a loan agreed while he was in No 10, wrote an article for the Daily Mail calling for western countries to step up efforts to arm Ukraine.

He warned that Russia was planning a new counter-punch offensive in the spring, which needed to be forestalled. The Ukrainians need hundreds of tanks, and they should be getting them from the Americans, the Germans, the Poles and many others, Johnson said.

Where does the western world need to station those tanks at the moment? Guarding North Rhine-Westphalia? Protecting Tennessee? Prowling the villages of Wiltshire?

So let me pose the question again: what conceivable grounds can there be for delay? Why are we not giving the Ukrainians all the help that they need, now, when they need it?